When I started High School we were still turning in hand written papers, in cursive. By the time I graduated they had to be typed and cite web sources. I’m really floored today, just thinking about how SUPER FAST things changed up on us back then.
Posted by Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 178 comments
OK I was in HS from 95-99. I was reading an article recently about the history of the internet and it got me thinking about when we all grew up.
As a high school freshman we were still allowed to turn in hand written papers and many of us still wrote in cursive. Sources for papers were still largely books or articles we got from the library.
By the time the 90s were closing out, along with my HS years, hand written papers were no longer allowed in most classes. A few of my IB teachers were also requiring at least one internet source for the papers. I had one early adopter as a teacher that even let us email our assignments in before that was much of a thing.
I remember most of us just adapting and taking it in stride. Sure there was some grumbling here and there but of course because, teenagers. Looking back that was a really rapid change, which is something I’m not sure anyone much older or younger than us can really relate to.
SlackerDS5@reddit
I was grateful. My handwriting sucked. It made me not want to turn in some of my papers. Rough drafts were usually the only versions of my papers.
Never had issues with writing papers. I loved it. But being able to see it on screen, come back and re-write and edit my thoughts was a Godsend.
OriginalZog@reddit
Same. I was telling my kids how I had my mom type stuff on a typewriter before high school and I typed it on a computer by graduation.
lazerdab@reddit
I didn’t type a paper on a computer until my very last assignment my senior year of high school school (96). Granted my parents were really old and poor so we never had a computer.
apt_get@reddit
I remember when typing papers was something you did as a flex and research for those papers was done with a stack of books and a notebook at the library. And like you said, in the span of a few years all that shifted to computer.
optimaloutcome@reddit
In 1997 our school started requiring typed papers. I made a bunch of money typing classmate's papers for them. It was great.
Live_Today1943@reddit
Best thing to happen to me! I wrote great papers that were constantly scored down for penmanship. 🤦🏻♀️ Ironically, now that everything is on computer, my handwriting is fantastic.
carlydelphia@reddit
6th grade I remember typing a paper on a fucking typewriter. Like 1993
elphaba00@reddit
I remember when our English teacher would schedule time in the computer lab so we could type up our papers in WordPerfect. She was also very resistant to computers and research so we'd have to hand in our note cards with handwritten notes with citations.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Oh damn I do recall some (most? all?) teachers insisting on getting hard written note cards with citations. The papers all had to be typed or printed out but yeah hand written note cards and detailed citations on them and all organized showing proof of construction of the paper, etc.
Wow, I had totally forgotten about the whole hand-written notecard basis to do term papers. At least college didn't have that method.
But unlike the OP, even in 1984 we could not turn in hand-written full on papers, nothing more than essay assignments could be hand-written. And most of us were using word-processing for papers by 1986 and some of us by 1982 in middle school.
Ashamed_Response_168@reddit
Wordperfect, that triggers a memory. I grew up with pc computers at home in the late 80’s. I hated using the Macintosh computers at school, and because of that experience I resisted Apple computers into my 40s (switched to iPhones in my 30’s). I have an Apple laptop that I LOVE now, but growing up I hated using school computers and nothing was compatible.
DeeSt11@reddit
I love that they kept the same start up sound
Ashamed_Response_168@reddit
Remember the encyclopedia Britannica ads? In middle school my family had a very abridged encyclopedia on cd-rom. It wasn’t in depth but I spent a lot of time looking up stuff on it.
apt_get@reddit
I remember my parents actually buying a set of encyclopedias from a door to door salesman. And then at school I would sit and read Comptons or groliers like I was surfing the internet.
Bacch@reddit
Grolier. Shit, in middle school I can remember copy/pasting from Grolier articles and handing them in to a teacher who was too tech dumb and generally clueless to notice. If Gen AI was a thing back then I'd have been boned.
alvinofdiaspar@reddit
Oh god, I remember getting mine in 95 - it looks amazing then, but it was so primitive when I think about it now.
As much as I love wiki, I still want a set of paper-encyclopedia now.
StrategyUnlikely398@reddit
Microsoft Encarta here
thoughtfractals85@reddit
Encarta! It had a fractal making thing! Stoner me loved that lol
I learned a lot from that cd rom.
Ashamed_Response_168@reddit
I think ours was Comptons, I had to look it up lol
sirdrumalot@reddit
My "senior project" (2001) consisted of a 5-page minimum research paper and I remember having to include at least ONE internet reference.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
Right! I don’t know exactly why that’s all just hitting me so hard today but it is. I feel more amazed thinking back on it today than I remember feeling actually living out the transition.
mountednoble99@reddit
I stopped writing in cursive after elementary school. Now, I can read it, but I can’t really write it!
IceSmiley@reddit
I'm 2 years younger and I think I always did in high school. At least for honors/IB/AP courses.
Main_Paramedic_292@reddit
I'm 46. I remember using a legal library with books. It was the most complicated system. The next year, it was all computer. Still sucked.
gooneryoda@reddit
I remember when we were allowed to turn in typed papers. Most teachers had as 12pt font requirement (Time New Roman font was popular) and of course some page minimum. I remember changing the font size of the period to 13pt because it gave me just a bit more paper. And it was very difficult to tell the size of the period was a different on paper. LOL
FriendOnFoxStreet@reddit
Don’t forget 1” margins.
Allureme@reddit
My first year of community college, we could still hand write but got a better grade if we typed it in 99
petuona_@reddit
If it's any consolation...
A lot of teachers are going back to hand-written essays to avoid AI.
A book, a page, a pencil/pen + your brain is a good combo.
Secondary research can help enhance your foundation once you've built the skills.
Otherwise, we may rely too heavily on the synthesis of others, and not develop that same skill set.
The impacts of AI on critical thinking are another story.
AdComprehensive7939@reddit
Handwritten was optional until my senior year, but typing classes were required for all sophmores starting in the mid nineties. We had a word processor until '96 and then a computer w/ no internet at home until '99. My handwriting was terrible so I usually typed papers. Upgrading from the teeny word processor screen felt like living large.
Johhnynumber5ht2a@reddit
When I was in middle school there was an English teacher who made the entire class write out a full page of the cursive alphabet 1 letter at a time PERFECTLY.
They used the special alphabet paper, and every letter had to be exactly as shown in the official cursive alphabet, the lowercase letters couldn't cross the middle line etc. They had to write each letter probably 25 times and they couldnt erase, it was in pen. If they messed up, they started over, or if they turned it in and any letter on the page was off, they had to do it again.
It took kids months to get through, I was never more happy to be in an advanced English class. But those poor kids did all that work, and probably never used cursive after highschool.
KoolAndBlue@reddit
I remember practicing cursive. Even when I was a kid I remember thinking it looked silly and pretentious. Who the hell thought replacing capital “Q” with “2” was a good idea? And why are there so many loops and circles on other letters that don’t need to be there? Bunch of nonsense.
I was required to write in cursive from 5th-7th grade and for some of my 8th grade teachers. Once I hit high school I was so glad to get rid of cursive. I can read cursive, but I can’t write it anymore. One skill I don’t miss.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
But what about taking notes in college?
And what if you ever want to read old postcards or family documents?
Or get into genealogy or who knows what?
KoolAndBlue@reddit
As I said- I can read cursive without problems. My college days are behind me, but when I was in college I had already switched back to printing for so long that it was no problem. I have no desire to learn cursive again. It would amount to basically a party trick at this point.
Bacch@reddit
I can still write it, but I hate it and it's slower for me than my normal writing. To be entirely fair, my normal handwriting is sort of a hybrid in the sense that I write small, super fast, and don't always pick up my pen between letters, so it's sort of print/cursive. I'll pick up my pen for an r, for instance, but my g will connect to the i that follows. Then again, in a word like meetings, my t will connect to the i, with the cross of the t extending and then running downward to form the bottom part and the dot somewhere in the general vicinity of the i.
Spartan04@reddit
That would have been hell for me. I hated learning cursive and as soon as I was allowed to I went back to print. My penmanship was never that great and then partway through elementary school I had to learn a new writing system that’s even more unforgiving if you don’t write perfectly neat.
Thankfully once I got to middle school the teachers cared a lot more that our assignments were legible than what writing system we used. I went back to print and haven’t used cursive much at all since then. Pretty much only for my signature.
r2k398@reddit
We also used a double space after a period and the Oxford comma.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
Oxford comma yes, but I was never taught the double space rule that gets mentioned a lot in nostalgia groups. I didn’t learn to type on a typewriter, so I assume that’s why.
r2k398@reddit
We learned it in our 7th grade keyboarding class.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
That’s so interesting to me. When I’ve seen this brought up people swear the double space rule was a hold over from the typewriting days.
Either way, for whatever reason, I don’t recall that being a thing.
a_seventh_knot@reddit
I remember handwritten reports in grammar school, typed reports on a physical typewriter, reports done in word perfect on a shitty 286 and printed on a 9-pin dot matrix printer ( tearing off the edges is satisfying ), up to word docs printed on inkjet printers. crazy.
Live_Today1943@reddit
My experience was similar, but I was class of 96. My school was kind of ahead, though, being a magnet school in a fairly wealthy area. We were one of the first schools to require a computer class for graduation. My family was definitely early adopters of technology, my mother was a defense contractor and had multiple computer related certifications, so the bar was already set for me. She encouraged me to challenge the class for credit, but I was afraid to because my standard of “knowing computer” was literally coding, because that’s what she did, and no way I could pass that! The first class literally was an hour of how to click and drag. I was so mad.
BeignetsAndWhiskey@reddit
My parents bought me my first PC in 1996. We didn't have a lot of money so I consider myself very blessed. My mom had a struggling small business and she bought it using the business account and it just went on the pile of the rest of the debt she had.
Anyway, it was a top of the line Gateway 2000. Basically maxed out in specs. It was something like $4,000. The person that we ordered from on the phone said it would last us ten years.
It made it maybe a year and a half before I started trying to get the money together to upgrade components. I ended up totally replacing it a few years later when I was in college.
The crazy thing is that a few of the components that were in that PC are now highly valued by retro PC enthusiasts. I often kick myself for basically scrapping it as junk. But it was at the time. It didn't even have USB ports
Sensitive_Pianist777@reddit
Was that the 386? Not even internet capable.
My cousin's family got one, and shortly after, the 486 came out which was internet/modem capable so basically just gave it to my family.
BeignetsAndWhiskey@reddit
No, it was a Pentium 133. It had 16gb of RAM, which was actually really high at the time. Like I said, it was maxed out as far as what Gateway 2000 offered. It also had a modem, but I don't think it was 56k. Pretty sure it was 28.8k.
But still, technology moved so fast that that was out of date pretty quickly. The fact that I got about 4 years out of it back then was a testament to how high-spec it was.
Meanwhile, in 2026, the mid-range laptop I bought in 2022 is still perfectly fine and I have no complaints
SerjiAzazel@reddit
Megabytes*
There were a few of us with 33.6kbps modems before 56k took over.
BeignetsAndWhiskey@reddit
Oops, everything is in GB these days so I just muscle-memoried it
Sensitive_Pianist777@reddit
Wow that was a beast and that would have been top of the class (Pentium was like warp speed ahead). Im also born in 79 and I think what really separates us (can include 80 as well) is 1997 was the first year some had computers but definitely in 1998, many more did.
Getting access to any adult material online freely at 18 (pretty much an adult done high school so it's lost is novelty) is much different than getting it at 15-16 which someone born in 1981-1982 would have gotten access too.
The age when boys are the most impressionable or eager for it without adult worries (by 18, you're either worried /stressed about school or working. At 15-16, you're more stuck at home daydreaming).
Asleep_Onion@reddit
What surprises me about school today, is apparently kids just don't write papers hardly at all anymore.
I remember writing literally hundreds of essays and reports from 3rd to 12th grade. My son is in 10th grade and throughout his whole education, and going to several different schools in different districts, has had to write, like, maybe 4 papers?
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
I don't recall having to write papers in elementary school in the 70s/earliest 80s, but perhaps I've just forgotten. Hmm maybe we had to write some short book reports I think starting around third grade actually. Nothing like full on giant high school or even middle school papers though. I recall having to write a few larger ones in Middle School for a variety of different types of classes. In high school usually two giant ones per year for English, gosh I hated them, I'd usually get near top score, but man I despised it, so much effort and time and unlike math it doesn't just flow out instantly and quickly, and I think one giant one per year for history. Maybe I'm forgetting something. We did have shorter essay assignments. It's hard to recall all the details.
Asleep_Onion@reddit
I remember I had to do huge reports several times a year (at just a regular public school in California), these were huge projects that were like 10+ pages and involved a ton of library research and writing multiple drafts over several months. I still remember a few of them:
3rd grade - Report about a native american tribe (their culture, history, etc). I did mine on the Apaches.
4th grade - Report about a gold rush era pioneer. I did mine on Kit Carson.
5th grade - Report about a historical event. I did mine on the city of Pompeii and its destruction.
6th grade - Report about an animal species. I did mine on orcas.
7th grade - Report about a US state. I did mine on New Mexico.
8th grade - Report about a country. I did mine on Kenya.
There were also many, many smaller book reports and essays all throughout those years. In high school I don't remember writing quite as many papers but definitely there were a few.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Yeah I don;t recall any large involved stuff liek that untl Middle School.
s-multicellular@reddit
I remember telling my teacher I would never use cursive in work. She argued with me quite vociferously.
She was wrong.
But it was even further than I have imagined. As an attorney, I haven't even hand written anything in a decade+ for work.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
I used it all through college and grad school to take notes and for in class tests.
And it's invaluable to known it having gotten into genealogy now.
s-multicellular@reddit
We all had to have laptops by the time I was in grad school (law school).
Emannuelle-in-space@reddit
Yeah I had the same history teacher in 12th grade that I’d had in 9th. He used to be mad strict about every cited source being a physical book in the library, and he took off points for websites. 4 years later, he had to teach us how to properly cite websites and it bothered him a lot.
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
I remember they hated when we used websites as sources.
adx@reddit
Remember when Wikipedia was never to be trusted for any research? Now I send my kids to Wikipedia because it's one of the few places I trust.
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
Could it be that people didn't listen to our intuition? We knew Wikipedia was going to be good. I always felt belittled by adults. What do kids know? Be seen and not heard. I feel like a cursed prophet now. I notice things and people never listen to me. I suspect I'm not the only one.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Me too
AetheriaInBeing@reddit
So you were a bit ahead of me. I was HS 99-03, but in Middle school in 95, we were getting told "You need to type everything and here's the librarian to teach you how to cite sources, especially websites! They're already doing this at the HS." but my HS was regional and in the early 90s the superintendent went *HARD* on being high tech so we were probably ahead of most places.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
We had to have all major papers typed or printed at my high school when I started in 1984. I'm not sure about middle school, maybe? I started using word-processing and printing out in 1982 as did a few other friends. By 1986 it seemed like a majority were using word-processing.
For all the ribbing, mocking and trashing NJ gets, the more I read stuff on reddit, the more I think maybe our state was hella ahead of the curve and hella rich compared to almost everywhere else. I mean we were like this in just a regular middle class district not one even one of the upper middle class or rich rich ones. Or maybe it's more just an unusual crowd on reddit.
AetheriaInBeing@reddit
I too went to hs in NJ.
Ive also found that sex Ed was way ahead of everyone else. I live in MA now and I'll be like "yea but that was basic sex Ed any 16 year old should have learned in the past 25 years anywhere civilized" and apparently more like only the last 15 years in some places.
Active_Two_6741@reddit
It was like this when I was in high school in the early 70s. By the time you were a senior papers had to be typed and sources had to cited. Of course then it was books,encyclopedias,magazines and newspapers.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Yeah, same for me, but I was in between you and the OP. It's crazy taht hand-written seemed tocome back again the 90s.
dzuunmod@reddit
HS 94-99 (I lived in Ontario, where we had 5 year HS at the time), and I had a teacher who insisted that every paper submitted to her be hand-written, and not... "from the machine".
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Dang even like 10-20 page long full on term papers?
Wouldn't it be a chore for her to try to read all that hand-writing and wouldn't hand-writing make them end up like 40+ pages long?
In my school district no term papers could be hand written at all even back in 1984!
emptybeetoo@reddit
Even in college, I’m not sure I had a class that required typed papers (of course everyone typed because it was easier and computer labs were easy to find). Requiring typed papers in high school in the 90s before everyone had a computer and printer at home sounds wild.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Wow, to me it's the opposite. I'm stunned the OP was allowed hand written full on papers in 1995!
We had to have them typed or printed.... in 1984! Heck, I think maybe even in middle school in 1982, not sure.
And most in my high school were using word-processing for them by around 1986 and some of us in 1982 already.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
Another redditor mentioned their teachers making sure that they all got computer lab time in order to type everything up.
Must’ve been nice. I remember most teachers requiring us to have typed papers at some point but not anybody offering assistance with the transition. It was every kid for themselves.
edasto42@reddit
I was in HS from 91-95. All our major papers had to be typed or printed. Homework essays could be handwritten though. I also went to a college prep high school, so the expectation was to prepare us for college norms.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Same for me, except it was just a regular public high school and it was the mid to late 80s!
I'm stunned that some were still doing hand written full length term papers in the 90s and late 90s at that.
Sensitive_Pianist777@reddit
Typewriters were still used. Electric one. I remember my parents buying one around 93 (or maybe when my sister went in 93) when I started high school. Trying to use the erase/white out function was darn near impossible to do properly.
Often just whited it out, tried to realign and type over it.
remoteworker9@reddit
Exact same here.
litchick@reddit
Yeah. My students now have access to websites that generate their works cited for them. On one hand I'm glad we aren't nit picking over proper citations, but I also think some of that stuff helped teach attention to detail.
User_Says_What@reddit
When I was teaching (2013-14) my high school students didn’t know how to use computers. They could use their phones, but I had to walk them through how to open Word docs in the computer lab. Most of them had no idea how to type, or how to format a research paper. I was gobsmacked at the time and probably reacted incredulously. I had no idea seniors could make it that far without knowing how to use a computer.
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
that's seriously wild
I mean most of my classmates in high school were using word processing by 1986!
MarsR0ve4@reddit
Thats CRAZY. What the hell happened to this world??
User_Says_What@reddit
Whole world went mobile. Computer Rooms turned into Desktops, which turned into Laptops which turned into tablets which turned into smartphones and now a generation or two of kids have grown up/are growing up being able to use the Internet with their thumbs and computers are too complex to fix yourself.
alvinofdiaspar@reddit
FYI I have heard worse at universities these days.
User_Says_What@reddit
Eh. I work in a university library and I see students using computers proficiently every day. Granted, I see the ones who come in to do work, so its a bit of survivorship bias.
alvinofdiaspar@reddit
At least some of them are - but lord I had heard many many horror stories of students in fields that expect proficiency in standard office software demonstrating none of it.
That, and AI.
callavoidia@reddit
Oh man, I remember when "Proficient in Microsoft Office" was a flex to include on your resume, and then we evolved to the point where it was embarrassing to include that on your resume because everyone was proficient in Microsoft Office. Have we looped back around to needing to include it again??
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
👆👆👆
BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit
Wow that blows my mind that you were allowed to turn in hand-written papers at the start of high school in 1995! The only place we wrote by hand was for at most for short essays or for in class tests.
We were not even allowed to do that in 1984! Heck I'm not sure if we were even allowed to do that in Middle School in 1982! Full on papers had to be typed or printed.
Some of us were already using word processing for them in 1982 and it seemed like most were by maybe 1986.
But OTOH yeah using the internet as a source or emailing in papers instead of hard copy was not an option even when I graduated. Technically I guess the teacher could have set up a BBS and had us send it in by that but yeah that was never done and many would have not be able to make use of that, plus the teacher would be stuck printing them all out themselves. But it was so satisfying ripping the perfs off the edge of your printed out papers though no?
It's wild that a few teachers insisted on at least on internet source for you in '99. I recall many profs/teachers still being wary or internet sources and they tended to be discouraged.
DeeSt11@reddit
I remember having my paper memorized when I kept having to rewrite it when I made a mistake (I refused to be embarrassed by white out). Then the type writer and mine was terrible! Then the computer...boy was I happy!
Esoteric_Owl87@reddit
We were the first generation to learn the pain of accidentally shutting the computer off before we saved the 10 page paper we just wrote, having to then start all over again…(for me it was fidgeting with my feet around the power cord, history paper on the Salem witch trials. Oh the agony I felt)
Psychological-Cry221@reddit
Fellow class if 99’!!! Best year to graduate IMO.
bigfancydelta@reddit
I was in HS '97-'00, and maybe it was just my HS, but we didnt have to write many papers, maybe 1 or 2 a year over all classes, and for every one the class was given time in the computer lab or library to research/write/print the paper. I knew quite a few people during my JR and Sr years that didnt have home internet or PCs. We got high speed cable internet at home right at the end of my JR year (hadn't had any before hand), and I built a PC for gaming. I might have written 1 or 2 papers on it, maybe, haha!
_Internet_Hugs_@reddit
I graduated in '98 and it was the same for me.
Spartan04@reddit
I was in high school a year later than you and had a similar experience, though for me even in middle school we were allowed the option to type our papers, it just wasn’t a requirement. We had a computer with a printer at home and I always preferred typing to handwriting so I used that option whenever I could but in middle school I was one of only a few that would do that.
Even my senior year of high school most of our assignments could still be handwritten if you wanted to but I do remember some being required to be typed.
Kiethblacklion@reddit
I was in high school during that same time period. I recall that our transition to typed papers wasn't so sudden or drastic. I vaguely remember turning in typed papers in 9th grade English. I don't think we could use internet resources that much, unless it was the educational sites that the school encouraged, like Encarta or the Encyclopedia Britannica website.
ACorania@reddit
I graduated just before you made it to highschool. I haven't had to write anything in cursive since grade school. All my papers were typ on computer since the late 80s.
Albeit printed on a dot matrix
bashturd@reddit
Graduated in 98. We had 4 computers with internet in the library, and a mac with photoshop in the art room. All our papers were handwritten written. But I went to school in a pretty poor school district. They probably figured none of us could ever afford a computer, so why bother.
kdrachael1@reddit
Same. Luckily I was taught how to type in middle school, but a lot of my high school classmates were not as lucky. I made a fortune typing papers for people. Lol
Dimac99@reddit
It was all handwritten in high school for me in Scotland, but then going to uni in Autumn 98 we had computer labs and were expected to type out essays. But we still had to print them off and hand them in to the department.
I'm struggling to remember how the printing worked though, we definitely had to pay but I don't remember where we paid and if we bought credits or what. I recall buying cards with magnetic strips for the library photocopiers quite clearly though because it bothered me how many people ignored (or just didn't read) the signs about how those cards would get the entire paper recycling batch rejected if they were thrown in the wrong bin.
I remember pulling an all nighter once and finishing, printing and delivering an essay before trudging back to halls, only to remember as I arrived in that I'd left my save disk (3.5 floppy!) in the tower, so I had to trudge back for it.
BreakfastBeerz@reddit
2 years ago, if you wanted a custom built application to handle a specific task, you needed to have been trained in software development for years and it would have taken you months to code/develop/deploy. 2 years later, pretty much anyone can do it in about 4 hours.
Li-RM35M4419@reddit
Class of 97. I took a typewriting class, on a typewriter, in hs.
Sensitive_Pianist777@reddit
Damn that's ancient. I'm same age but we had these what felt like mid 80s DOS computer. It was great to learn it on.
odin_the_wiggler@reddit
Jeez. Did your school have electricity?
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
Hah I took a word processing class on electric typewriters, then had to take a computer typing class and the teacher had no idea what she was doing. I wasn't the best typist but I learned ahead and helped her teach the class. It was a small woodsy town. In fact..
It was tradition each year for Elementary classes to go on essentially a LARPing field trip to the one-room schoolhouse the town still had. We dressed up like colonials and learned about when the town was founded (1667). I was upset they didn't let us use quill and ink, just pencil. It was a lot of fun, like a second Halloween that year. Yes, Northeast. Obviously haha
callavoidia@reddit
I see your LARPing field trip and raise you a LARPing field trip plus cultural appropriation.
Over on the opposite corner of the country in the southwest, we did an overnight field trip to a nearby Spanish mission in the fourth grade. Activities included making dream catchers with chopsticks and yarn, creating sand art based on Native American weave patterns, making hand dipped candles which we used in a night time vigil inside the mission ruin, mixing up adobe stucco with our feet to make bricks just like the (totally not enslaved) Native Americans did to help build the mission, and, of course, eating "Indian Fry Bread." All without ever actually interacting with any Native Americans.
Honestly, it was a really cool field trip and a highlight of the fourth grade, but man, looking back... Yikes.
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
You get an LMFAO for that one. Some real Americana there. Really gets the message across it's a long-dead civilization that we're built on top of. One big haunted Indian burial ground.
I'm still not convinced the ppl at Plimouth Plantation are actually natives. Plus it's always in the Fall and they're out there draped in leather burning out canoes and smoking fish. At least the white ppl outside get to pull chicken feathers in 7 kinds of wool.
We also have a legit decommissioned battleship / museum that they let the Scouts camp on, down near the bilge lol. Also has been used as a haunted "house," but then again we put those in old mills too.
ElleAnn42@reddit
We had a choice of typing or keyboarding, which was typing on a computer. I took keyboarding because it was obvious that typewriters were becoming antiquated technology. Plus keyboarding class used fun software.
wagashi@reddit
Mine, you had to take typing (on typewriter) as a prerequisite to Office Technologies, which was Office, Excel, Access.
RupeThereItIs@reddit
Same & same, well, middle school.
Didn't bother w/typewriting in HS as I was already like 80wpm by then.
RnR1977@reddit
I did too, then two periods later I was in a computer applications class.
Embarrassed_Ad9166@reddit
Class of 2000. Typewriting class on a typewriter in 97, they changed to keyboarding on a computer by the time I graduated.
ExcitingAntelope5005@reddit
Me too!
RanklesTheOtter@reddit
I'm glad in HS some teachers were still rocking hand written papers. I wrote a ton the day they were due, in homeroom. 🤣
For us it wasn't until University I had to start writing everything and carrying around that MLA handbook.
Towards the end of highschool though a few classes were like, ok we're going to the computer lab to write our papers, and we're gonna learn how to cite sources.
Sensitive_Pianist777@reddit
Man, in 1997 as a senior, I remember writing out my paper assignments by hand, going to my friend's house at like 5am who had a computer then typing it out before school started. Prob 3-4 page type paper.
lastminutealways@reddit
I was thinking as I read the title that that was my exact experience in college - and I was in college the same years you were in HS. I distinctly remember the era I went from typing out my handwritten paper to turn in to just writing it on the computer too.
marthaanne3@reddit
Ya, I used the Funk and Wagnals to look up my homework, learning technology was hard!
KTbear999@reddit
I consider that to be the most defining characteristic of Xennials as a micro generation. It’s not just that we had an analog childhood and digital adulthood. Our entire childhood and adolescence was filled with constant change where things we learned quickly became obsolete and we had to then learn an entirely new thing.
We learned how to use floppy disks and 3.5” disks and then CD-roms and then digital downloads. We perfected making mixed tapes just in time for Napster to turn that into a lost art. We learned how to use a card catalog and encyclopedia, and before we could really use that skill set we then had to learn Boolean searches for digital databases on library computers and Ask Jeeves. We learned how to fold paper maps and dig for change for tolls while driving just in time for Mapquest, GPS devices, and transponders to turn that into a useless skill. We figured out the logistics of waiting in line with paper forms signed by professors to register for college classes right before they moved everything to a new online portal we then had to figure out.
I know these experiences aren’t universal to every Xennial but we can all make a list of things we had to learn more than once because the world changed so quickly during a time that we were supposed to be learning supposedly lifelong knowledge and skills.
S_A_R_K@reddit
Don't forget downloading mp3s and converting them to wav in order to burn them onto a CD and listen to them in your car
wagashi@reddit
Let's not forget the much hated, Zip Disk.
Bacch@reddit
Hey now, we'd use Napster to make mix CDs that we could play on our Discman that was plugged into a tape thing we'd stick into our car stereo!
who_even_cares35@reddit
The first episode of mad Men when they sit Peggy down at her typewriter and tell her it's been designed easy enough for a woman to understand!!
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
I can’t tell you how hard your comment made me LOL
who_even_cares35@reddit
I just watched that episode a few days ago, it's a great scene
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
Great scene from a great show.
emmyg85@reddit
My school was behind the times compared to yours. I graduated ‘04 from HS. I don’t remember typing a paper for any non computer class until college.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
Did you grow up in a very rural area by any chance?
emmyg85@reddit
No, even though I did grow up in the south I’m from a fairly large city.
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
Exactly, yeah. I remember. Class of 2000. We were just like, OK guess we do it this way now. I think a lot of us wanted to type and print. There was also a sense that we didn't know any better-- maybe changes like this were normal? I don't remember grown-ups freaking out so it was smoother. The pressure to buy tech to keep up annoyed my parents tho. You could type on almost anything but you needed a printer too. It became school supplies like buying notebooks. Didn't some computers come w printers? Did anyone take their paper on-disk to the computer lab and print before class? I think I did that in college.
The way you said that about teens grumbling... I almost feel like they told us that. If we resisted a change it was like: don't complain, this is growing up. This is just how it is now. You don't want to be left behind, keep up. The job market will be competitive. This is the future. Hmm sounds eerily familiar these days.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
To be fair to my former classmates, looking back I remember that a lot of kids still didn’t have computers at home. These requirements came down and, at my school at least, I don’t recall any staff caring about the inconvenience. So for a chunk of us we had to navigate a hodgepodge network of libraries, computer labs, parent’s workplaces, friends, relatives and/or neighbors just to get our required work done.
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
For real. Being able to do everything at home sitting down was a big incentive to prioritize a home computer. That's why those iconic desks always look so full and cluttered like it's gonna collapse. You needed the side table for desk space. (not mine but knew ppl w that desk) CRT, big printer, CD tower, cabinet of manuals, box of floppies, Dad's taxes...
It doesn't fit my computer now, but I still have the CD box my dad made. He sized it to my tower as a riser w storage. It's crude but cool. Slide drawer. It's where I've always kept WarCraft, StarCraft and Timelapse. Treasure box.
Soggy_Porpoise@reddit
I was there in that tiem well, 94-98 in back to back classes I'd have to either turn in a typed paper or a cursive one depending on the teacher.
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
That’s dead on. The inconsistency was crazy.
Soggy_Porpoise@reddit
The worst was the hand written thought draft turns ins along with a typed. Like bitch please.
EmmalouEsq@reddit
It was crazy. We went from card catalogs at the library to having to sift through and verify things being seen online. We had to cite internet sources but they had to be reliable. Then we got to be one of the first classes to learn how to write internet sources.
Same in law school. When I started it was all Shepherdizing in the library. By the end it was using Lexis or Westlaw.
malai556@reddit
Those were my college years. I went from handwriting everything in high school to typing everything on a computer in college. We could sparingly use internet sources, but they’d better be cited correctly. It could NOT be Wikipedia.
My kid is in high school now. She told me the other day she had to turn in her works cited page for a project. It was just google and a book. I asked her if she used google to go to a website, or if google gave her the answer. Google was the site she cited. <.< She said her prof was ok with that. I can’t even.
ReadGardenCamp@reddit
I am on your side; Google can’t possibly be accepted as a source.
PurpleDraziNotGreen@reddit
Grade 10 my teacher had enough of my bad cursive writing, and I was allowed to hand print from then on. Just doing my part...
deerbelac@reddit
I've had this kind of conversation a lot. I like to tell people that are not my age that we had an analog childhood and a digital adolescence.
Icaruskillswitch@reddit
The one that hit me, out of the blue. Job hunting and asking vqruous places for an application form only to be met with "eh.....its all online now".
Last-Stop-Before-You@reddit (OP)
About 2 years ago I had a very sweet recent HS graduate stop by my job to inquire about work and wanting to hand out her printed resume.
The irony that I had to break the news to her that we do not accept physical resumes and refer her to our online portal.
NeedsMoreTuba@reddit
Who else had their entire paper deleted when a virus crashed their computer?
I rewrote mine by hand after my computer failed to get it done, and then my teacher wouldn't accept it. My handwriting is incredibly legible. I'm still mad at that batch.
Cisru711@reddit
Not a virus, but a computer crash and corrupted file left me with 6 hours to recreate a 10 page paper from scratch. Frankly, it probably ended up being better.
BasicRabbit4@reddit
Happened to me in university. I lost a 20 page paper that was due the next day. Stayed up all night rewriting it from memory.
Bacch@reddit
My senior honors thesis in college was nearly lost when the needle dropped on the hard drive in my laptop. Had to pay a couple thousand dollars to salvage the data and thankfully my draft was saved. It was nearly 100 pages at that point. I was absolutely losing my shit.
CosmicMamaBear@reddit
My film as literature course had dual professors. They insisted the class turn in the term papers by our student emails. We politely explained the university server had a virus. This was about 1997. They jeered and thought this was a class prank. We said we would gladly turn in our assignments on paper, we didn't want them to get a virus from the university server. Most of us were heavy internet users, the lab techs were heavy internet users, we all understood how bad the firewalls were; however. the University admin did not.
It got so bad in the class with the professors arguing with us, we threw up our hands said it's your computers and left at the end of class. Oh, I had my paper contained on a disc on on the home computer. Yes, that is how long ago this was. I sent my paper from the lab and did not touch that disc again.
Sure enough, our final paper was postponed. Not only did their home and office computers crash but the entire department. The school got a new firewall and new virus software.
fromthedarqwaves@reddit
We are the same age. I’ve had a typewriter since I was 9.
ronejr71@reddit
In the very late eighties I could hand in a printed version with demands. Double lines, correct character placement, lined up in the middle of the page to keep margins right. There were a few more. I probably got more points off foe printing it than handwriting it. Obviously your cheating if you have a computer before there was internet.
nectarinetree@reddit
In high school, in the '90s, I personally was NOT allowed to turn anything in handwritten, because the teachers all said my handwriting was no good and they could not read it. Other students could turn things in handwritten, though.
Now, I am back in school, taking a college class online, and the instructor wants for us to do work using handwriting, and scan it and turn it in that way. Can't be typed. I haven't had any problems, though, with her saying she can't read it.
The world mostly just . . . . . continues to baffle me.
cventers80@reddit
94-98 here, and exactly the same.
trilogyjab@reddit
I remember it being a relief to type instead of handwrite papers. I had, and still have, poor penmanship.
RupeThereItIs@reddit
Uhm, I NEVER remember HS teaches accepting cursive.
I was '92-'97.
They tought you cursive, told you you'd need it for high school, then told you to never use it again because it was hard to read.
firstlight777@reddit
Chromebooks, and now AI have ruined education. These kids are hardly learning anything. Hopefully society will wake up to this fact.
Bacch@reddit
This has never been more evident to me than the fact that of my two older kids (one of whom has graduated, the other of which is about to graduate), both want to do something in fields relating to my college degree. I have a poli sci/international relations degree, so anytime they'd have questions about related things, I'd take them deep down a rabbit hole. I was not nearly so useful with math or science, and they rarely had any questions about English (which is a shame because I nearly majored in English and am a voracious reader--to be fair so are they, but they read pulp stuff and don't touch non-fiction or literature). The oldest wants to be a history teacher and the one about to graduate wants to get a poli sci degree and go on to law school.
What that tells me is I passed on more of my passion for my favorite topic to them than their teachers managed to pass on to them for theirs. Granted, I changed my major in college and went in thinking I was going to do creative writing, but it was always a toss-up between the two for me. The fact that my 18 year old can intelligently discuss SCOTUS decisions with me but is struggling to trudge through 1984 is depressing to me.
alvinofdiaspar@reddit
Early Xennial - essays were definitely a typed/word-processed affair by the time I left HS. In-class PowerPoint presentation is rare but already started to happen.
BasicRabbit4@reddit
I was in university in the early 2000s. We werent allowed to use internet sources at all, it had to be peer reviewed journals only. Wild how things changed.
Bacch@reddit
I can remember turning in typed and printed reports back in middle school (I was class of '99). But not all of them, and up until college it wasn't consistent from one class to the next.
As for sources, in college in particular most of my sources were offline. I can remember writing my honors thesis in 2003 and having a stack of books from the library so high I took a picture standing next to them all stacked and it was as tall as I am (6'0"). I do remember in another class using an online source at least once, I was writing about the Dirty War in Argentina and the State Department had recently declassified their intelligence documents relating to it. Stumbled across that around 1 am and wound up not sleeping that night because of how horrific it all was.
Brent_L@reddit
Fuck the footnotes. But yeah we used to have competitions in school on who can write the fastest I went to school from 95-99 also.
Derp35712@reddit
Before zero tolerance my friend got caught with weed and just got yelled at. After that nightmare policy, kids were arrested.
Moist_Rule9623@reddit
I don’t remember if mine were REQUIRED to be typed as a freshman, but seeing as we had a computer in the house (mom ran a software company from a home office) I submitted mine typed. I’m older than you though, so there were no web references in the early/mid 90s yet; my bibliographies had to cite actual books through high school.
Now when I went to college it was IMMEDIATELY a different story. (I should also note I went to a catholic high school, they aren’t known for being early adopters on technology lol) College faculty jumped into the internet feet first as soon as it was a thing, including online submissions, emails with the professors; and I think citing online resources by URL was permitted but not required
Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit
Grade 8 my papers were by hand. Grade 9 we got a home computer and I tackled typing ASAP and started turning in everything I could typed. By grade 10 I was even referencing stuff from my grade 9 save files.
StevieV61080@reddit
I had a bit of a strange childhood where I veered from bleeding edge technology to incredibly antiquated conditions. I grew up in a college town with a lot of BBSes, Prodigy, CompuServe, etc., in the 1980s and was on a PC around 1985. I had challenges with motor control, so handwriting (and speech) were things with which I had struggles, so when typing became an option, I quickly gravitated to it.
I typed out most of my assignments and papers in elementary school until I moved away from the college town in 1993. I moved to an area where the population was predominantly an old-order Amish community, so about the polar opposite of what I had previously experienced. It wasn't until my junior year (96-97) when we got access to "long-distance" dial-up, so I had this weird period of having telephony from 86-93 and then not again until 96. My HS friends thought I was making stuff up for the longest time.
Regardless, I was still typing out most of my assignments throughout HS. I even typed out cringey love letters on a nightly basis.
hocfutuis@reddit
I think this is the biggest difference in my siblings and I childhoods. We're pretty close in age (me 80, 82, and 84) but there was that shift between us from handwritten to typed/the internet becoming more normal somewhere in the middle.
HOTDOGVNDR@reddit
And in 30 years later, a major amount of kids don't know how to operate a PC.
ZEEDarkstream@reddit
I remember stressing out coz we HAD to submit typed reports, and I was like I don’t have a pc or a typewriter. So had to borrow one from a business owning relative to do the report over the weekend. Took forever. After that I just went nope 👎 handwritten only
Aggravating-Tax-2121@reddit
And then getting into college and hearing shit like, "This paper is clearly in APA format, but we prefer Klipenshlepper-Dingleplott".
jaqattack02@reddit
From what I've heard they are starting to move back to handwritten papers just to make it that much harder to have it be AI generated.
BillHistorical9001@reddit
I road in a car yesterday with no driver. 🤯
Hossflex@reddit
Went to catholic school for grades 1-6. Everything was in cursive starting in 2nd grade. 7-12 I went to public school and never wrote in cursive again.
PopularSet4776@reddit
I have really bad handwriting so I started turning I'm typed papers early while I was in middle school (for reference this is '93 to '96).
My teachers reacted in a way as though it was the first typed paper they ever got.
TinyRandomLady@reddit
Throughout my public school education, I hand wrote papers, used a typewriter, had a dot matrix printer for my IBM Tandy computer, then I got an ink jet printer, a HP computer with Word and it was like a whole other world.
Dude, it’s still floors me that when I was a sophomore in college, I stumbled upon Wikipedia. This would’ve been 2003 or 2004. No one I knew had ever heard of it, teachers had no problem with it, it was super helpful and like a semester or 2 later it was totally banned.
6thBornSOB@reddit
I like to ask Momma(82) to tell my daughters(11-13) about how much specific things have changed (phones, TV, general tech) since she was their age. They each seem to genuinely get a kick out of it!
ShillinTheVillain@reddit
Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe in kindergarten, by senior year we had cell phones (I didn't but many did) and online games.
It went crazy fast.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
It's weird, I did cursive, typewriter, and computer for writing and it did not feel redundant for some reason.
New_Stats@reddit
There were people who were born before indoor plumbing and electricity in houses were common. They were born into a world where throughout the entirety of human history, man could not fly. They were children when the airplane was invented. They were elderly when man walked on the moon.
They absolutely went through advances no one could ever dream of when they were born.
Appropriate-Food1757@reddit
Had a nice little bit there where I had Internet before the teachers even knew it was a thing.
jayfornight@reddit
I still have my mla handbook.
Weekly_Library9883@reddit
Attended HS 1998-2002. I remember my English class requiring typed papers, in proper MLA format, and you even got docked points for not having 2 spaces behind the period of a sentence. We were limited with internet sources, as a lot of students still didn’t have the internet (rural community). I remember having “library days” when the class would go to the school library to do research for our papers since our public library was very outdated and kind of inaccessible.
You’re right, it was a rapid change, and I don’t think any forthcoming generations will have to manage anything like that. Changes happen so quickly anymore that children learn from a very young age to just adapt when it comes to new technology.
justtapitin65@reddit
Same for us in Ontario ‘94-99. As someone who struggles to write due to hypermobility, I was relieved when we could hand in typed work.
Moxie_Stardust@reddit
We had to turn in typed papers in high school in 1994-95. I think it may have only been specific classes, don't remember for sure, but I do remember getting paid to type up reports for someone else.
ExcitingAntelope5005@reddit
This is why I think our little generation will be the best of the grownups at handling the changes AI makes. I see those older than us just kind of refusing to learn how to use it, and some younger than us digging their heels in and catastrophizing. I have 2 Gen Z kids and 1 Alpha, and they are already immersed in it.
I mean I am worried about the data centers and the water and the intellectual property theft and the job losses and suicides and the fake girlfriends, and maybe even the giant AI brain that will enslave us all in the matrix. But am still using it to make my business run more smoothly and more profitably.
We’ve seen the world wholly non-understandable like 5 times and we keep trucking.
I had someone that was maybe 30-35? lecture me about the ethics of AI and how they boycott it. I applaud her passion, I truly do. But my gross sales are up 25% and I had to HIRE an employee to keep up. I will use my vote to hopefully get more regulations on data centers and theft, I’ll do my best to raise my kids only traumatized enough to be funny but not enough to seek solace in AI. And if we end up in the matrix we probably won’t even know so whatever. I’ll control what is in my power to control. But I will use tools available to me to make life the best it can be for myself and my family. I’ll keep on truckin.
Leading-Summer-4724@reddit
Graduated 98 here, and while it was cool to have your paper typed, teachers couldn’t flat out require it and would still accept hand-written reports, so long as they were neatly done. While we had a computer lab, it was only enough computers for the kids to use during typing class, but not enough for just any student to use to type a report if they didn’t have a computer at home.
FiveCrappedPee@reddit
Sounds about right but honestly can't remember specifically because i just came back from lunch after smoking a shit ton of weed.
TheDorkyDeric@reddit
I was in HS 94-98, exact same scenario.