Bad Handwriting and Skills Lost in a Changing World

I have bad handwriting. I haven’t always had bad handwriting, as I used to do it all the time, and if I really slow down and write slowly, my handwriting can be neat. I can still write in cursive if I want to, and I sign my name in the cursive I learned before I was 10.

But I can see people squinting to read any notes I handwrite, and some people say they can’t even read them. I can usually read them, but sometimes, these days, my handwriting is so messy I can’t even read it. It has become somewhat of a problem when I need to reference my notes later and don’t remember what happened at a particular meeting, where my focus is to jot down as much information as possible and not on the neatness of my writing.

The deterioration of my handwriting came for the same reason as many people in my generation: I stopped doing it. After high school, I largely just didn’t need to handwrite anymore. Exams occasionally had essays, but they were mostly multiple choice and on scantrons. As I went through college from 2015 to 2019, software started to develop to be able to take exams on your computer and type on the computer, which made typing a lot more important.

Typing became a much more important skill throughout my life. People often compliment how fast I can type, and how I can type without even looking at the keyboard with substantial accuracy. I credit that to playing too many online games and being addicted to MMORPGs when I was younger, but yes, typing is largely a much more important skill in my daily life and day and age than handwriting.

Almost all the work I’ve done in responding to emails or writing is done through typing. Even the domination of the smartphone in daily life has steered me away from writing.

So there’s always a part of me who says “who cares?” when it comes to having bad handwriting. But undoubtedly, handwriting is still more meaningful. When I write people letters and thank you cards, I handwrite them.

I slow down and am more intentional because I obviously want them to be able to read it, but sloppy handwriting also makes the card feel less meaningful. Two and a half years ago, I was writing thank-you cards for people who came to our wedding, and that was a time when my handwriting was a bit better.

The deterioration of my handwriting is a basic sign of how bad something can get if you don’t use that skill anymore, and for me, it’s a sign of an area in my life where I’m getting worse, not better. I would like my letters to be better. I’m also a writer, so what does it mean if my handwriting is trash?

When I was teaching in the school system, there was one year one of my colleagues ran a cursive club. The education system had stopped teaching cursive, and as far as I know, this club seemed to have quite a bit of interest. Cursive and handwriting are inherently intertwined because if bad handwriting is hard to read in print, it can be exponentially harder to read in cursive.

But many of our students had not been taught cursive, as cursive was cut from the Common Core standards in 2010. But it is now making a bit of a comeback — New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a state law that mandated cursive instruction for grades three to five for all public schools on January 19 of this year. I think some of the arguments for re-introducing cursive make sense — people need to sign their names, and there is more retention when taking notes through handwriting.

On this last point, a 2014 study found that taking notes through handwriting requires actively paying attention, prioritizing what is being said, consolidating it, and relating to what was said before, making retention better. From law school, my personal experience of the con of taking notes on the computer was that it was really easy to get distracted. But the pros outweighed the cons since my computer notes could be translated to an outline I used for my final exam, so I think these issues are more nuanced than handwriting or typing being better. Different forms of writing are more important for different contexts and situations.

Regardless, I was a teacher who often had students handwrite. And if I needed to write notes next to their grades, I could make themneat. But the way that we often evaluated handwriting as neat or organized sometimes made me wonder whether there is a preference for style over substance, whether too many people pay attention to the style of handwriting rather than what the person is actually writing. I never cared if students’ handwriting was bad, only having to ask a student to clarify if I could not read it.

Therefore, it’s not the most important thing in the world, but I would like to improve my handwriting and reclaim a lost skill.

Another lost skill is the ability to do math calculations in my head, without the assistance of a calculator. When I was 8, I was recognized for being the fastest in the class fast to pick up on my multiplication table, and I can still calculate multiplication numbers up to 15, like I could when I was in third grade.

When I go to a restaurant, I usually try to calculate tip or gratuity in my head. I should know what 20% of $31.75 is very easily, and in the past, right after high school, I could have done it in about five seconds. And it’s not like I completely don’t know how to do those calculations now, but I’m not as sharp with these calculations as I used to be. There are times I have accidentally calculated 25%, not 20%. There are times when I need to write the calculation on the receipt (.2* the price) and do long multiplication there.

Why don’t I just use the calculator and accept that I am worse, that the world’s technology has gotten better, and move on? I don’t know — some of it is pride. I have lived my whole life with the “Asians are good at math” stereotype, but I really did pride myself on being good at math when I was younger, especially long multiplication and division when I was much younger. I even won an award as one of the best math students in my elementary school.

Am I going to lose that much sleep over it? No. But it’s a reminder that I am losing that a bit is a reminder of my fallibility and limits, that perhaps with more tools like calculators and the ability to frequently navigate Excel sheets that can do these calculations, I’m losing other, more foundational skills.

I am at, ostensibly, what is supposed to be the peak of my cognitive abilities, at 28 years old and after getting the equivalent of a doctorate degree in a juris doctor (J.D.). I have to deal with complex legal issues and situations every day. But what does all that really mean if I struggle to know what 20% of $38.50 is when paying a check?

Therefore, there are still calculations I would like to do in my head. It’s not like I am trying to do 3.5361285* 7.3333333 all the time, as I do on Excel. However, calculating gratuity is one area in which I would like to still do math in my head.

There is much about a changing world or progressing technology that renders much of these skills obsolete, or the utility not a bit there anymore. And I know most of us have a part of ourselves that has some sense of dismay or disappointment when we can’t do those things anymore. Perhaps there is a part of us that is limited, that can only have so much capacity and bandwidth, that when one door opens, there is a chance another door closes.

But I also run marathons, and there’s one thing I know about running from doing it on and off since I was 12. A general maxim that has been true throughout my running career is that it is easy to return to where you once were, but harder to push into uncharted territory. If you have broken 5 minutes in the mile, it’s easier to do it again than push into running 4:40. I have experienced this even after months of injury, that I could get back to running my personal best before, but struggled to make big jumps beyond that personal best.

For purposes of these two lost skills, getting back to where I once was is more than enough, not to show off, but to prove to myself I have not lost it. If having neat handwriting again or being able to do .22 * $45.50 effortlessly in my head are skills I once had, practice won’t make perfect. But they should get me back to some level of minimum competency, which would provide some reassurance.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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