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Collection: Directories and Documents > Yearbooks
Nevada City High School - The Quill (371.QUI.1912)(1912) (108 pages)
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Page: of 108
20 THE QUILL
A History of the Commercial Department
The commercial department of the Nevada City high school was
organized two years ago with Miss Weaver as teacher. The upper floor of
Hibernia Hall was fitted up so as to answer the purpose of a schoolroom. The center of the room was filled with desks; a study table was
vlaced at each end of the room, while three tables for the typewriters
were put in one end and the teacher’s desk in the front. Well, so much
or the room; we will now look to the occupants of the room and their
daily work.
The first class to begin work in this room was composed of thirtyfour pupils. Some had spent one year in the high school, some two,
some three; and others had just graduated from the grammar school,
so you can see that some had advantages over others, but we soon got
used to our surroundings and then had to get down to work.
In penmanship we started with the wooden end of a pen, trying to
make something like a continuous circle across the page. We practiced
forty minutes that way, and the next day we used the steel pen. Then
the trouble hegan. The pen would invariably dig into the paper and
leave a thick, black, irregular fine, instead of the smooth, rounded
curves of the oval movement. After many months of hard practice
with an encouraging word now and then and then from the teacher,
we became better acquainted with the pen and paper.
Next came bookkeeping. Simple work was taken up first and
gradually we worked up to the hard part. Talk about difficulties! A
trial balance generally had two or three thousand dollars more on one
side than on the other. A check book would be sure to have an overcraft when there should be several hundred dollars to the owner’s
credit. As we progressed. in the work it became easier, and now few
mistakes are recorded.
Shorthand was certeinly puzzling at first; it was a mixture of
dots, dashes, and up and down strokes. Of course, rules had to be
Jearned, but the application was the hardest. We could recite the
rules in class, but when it came to applying them while taking dictation, we would generally turn a circle outside the curve instead of
inside, or write a stroke downward when it should have been written
upward. But after the system was learned the work became interesting. There is a certain delight in being able to take down a piece
of work in shorthand and then transcribe it accurately.
Well, next comes typewriting. As you know, we are studying the
touch system of typewriting; in which all the fingers are used and the
eyes are kept off the keyboard entirely, to folloee the copy or notes
from which the operator is writing. :
Our first difficulty was to keep our eyes from the keyboard. It.