So what’s everyone do for a living? Just curious…I know we have a few students, database analysis whatever-ers, who knows what all!
Anyways, I’m in the Army, unfortunately…but fortunatly I’m stationed in Germany! So I’m learning the language of course…just about to start venturing forth and attempt avoiding asking if they speak english at the beginning of every conversation! In the Army, I’m an electrician basically. When a rocket or missle system’s computers break down, they send them into me…and I’ll find what’s wrong and fix the circuit cards, wiring, whatever’s broken. Then I’ll rake leaves and mop hallways on the side (it’s the Army! What did you expect?!) My “other” job is online poker : ) Which is always fun…so far I’m up $300 this month!
So yup…I actually have to go to work right now (the Army one : ) …so I’ll cut it short. Take care!
./[tyler]
(by psetus
for everyone)
for everyone)
Tyler, since you asked, I'm one of those "database analysis whatever-ers," to quote you. I'm the one (and, apparently, the ONLY one), who can yank data back out of the complicated, ancient computer software we use. I work for a state university and love what I do, but not as much as I do Gregg. I'm part of HR, not I.T., although I have a master's in computer science and one in psychology which we're not going to talk about.
If I could produce that updated Anniversary manual someone else mentioned recently–and make the same kind of money I'm making now–Id' do it in a flash. I'd LOVE to teach shorthand in a classroom setting. I'm willing to teach DJ if that makes it more palatible to "the masses"!
Carbon paper, anyone?
Marc
I'm a secretary, sort of. I work in the department that deals with all the vehicles that go with the company. So I do mostly secretary work. I think my title is Fleet Administration Assistant. I don't use shorthand in this position but have in others, mostly for minutes of meetings. I now use it for voice messages (I'm on the phone so much I get tons). that's why I'm learning the Anniversary Edition in the Functional Method. I have time and don't have to worry about outlines in the heat of diction. Marc, we have a night school here at local high schools, and ANYONE can submit ideas for classes… do they have that in your area? There was some shorthand classes (the regular one was a letter-shorthand and then there was one for those who all ready knew gregg–all taught by the same teacher). So that might be an idea. Debbi
I am a high school student at the moment. My interests, outside of Gregg, include the piano and musical score working (typesetting sheet music) as well as mandolin playing and choral singing. Also, I am quite fond of web work, such as designing web pages. I find a new fancy every day! Recently, it has been building skill on the stenograph machine. It is oodles of fun and does me no end of good. Language is a big section of my interest. I have studied many many languages, but am only fluent in English, slightly fluent in Spanish, about as fluent in Esperanto, and I have a basic idea of the mandatory Greek, Latin, Russian, Tuvan, and most any language. Phonetics is another big area of interest. For a long time, I have been studying phonetics and its notation (IPA). This love of writing systems is what introduced me to Gregg Shorthand. I have also been quite interested in intellectual debates in religious matters, but I dare not take part in those debates. Poetry is another interest; particularly that of E. E. Cummings, a poet whose work is almost impossible to write in Gregg Shorthand. With the study of Gregg Shorthand comes the study of good penmanship. I have recently concentrated on the improvement of my handwriting, by using the good Spencerian Script and Ornamental Script, which can be found at the Web site of Zanerian College (a penmanship college frequently advertised in The Gregg Writer back in the day). It is almost funny how so few people seem to be able to even read cursive these days. That is what I do. —Andrew Owen
Well, I'm a scientist for a drug & biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a Bachelor's in Pharmacy, and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences. My work involves developing new drugs for cancer and infectious diseases. So I guess I'm the boring one . I also teach part time at a major university — that's a lot of fun. I used shorthand heavily in college. Nowadays, I use it in my work for note taking (to keep it from rusting), but it is more of a hobby for me. The project about writing the Anniversary book is something that has crossed my mind, but like Marc said, I'm not sure it's going to make any money. I wonder about copyright restrictions as well. So the second best thing is the web site, which I'm working on.
I just got here so no one knows me yet…so this can be like an intro. I'm a high school student, last year (*panics*). I take a culinary arts class (vocational program-thing) right now, and fully intend to go to culinary school after high school. Main interest outside of cooking is…languages. Andrew, I'm jealous. I took 3 years of spanish, but having no place to use it sucked it all away pretty fast, and my Esperanto isn't terribly good yet. But I'm trying! And I have huge trouble with the IPA, because I don't understand vowels. I can get all the consonant sounds down fairly well, but I can never tell what vowel sound they mean, no matter how well its described. A lot of the appeal of Gregg was that it was a new writing system I could learn that didn't require learning a new language. Ditto Japanese kana. jess
Marc, do you program? Or do you just deal with the user end of DB programs? As you might've read in one of my posts about Greggory, I'm a C++ freak : ) I think it's a beautiful thing…beautiful to the point of rivaling the complete works of the Brontë sisters and maybe even a couple Coleridge poems! Ok…well not really. That was near heretical of me to speak…I was wrong. But it's still a near perfect thing! I was looking into using a database for a poker-opponent tracking program I was making…but then it basically boiled down to "why not just use a comma seperated text file?!" Which I suppose in a way is denotatively and philosophically a database…but it isn't a "REAL" database…then I figured…I'm writting a novel, working on a cd, programming Greggory, reading an almost 1000 page novel (Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel by Suzanna Clarke which is a quaint, fun little (big) break from "artsy, classic" books), a backlog of sewing projects I want to work on, learning German, taking an online class, and pretending like I'm studying Gregg shorthand lessons…so I trashed it straightway. I should probably drop a couple of those…but it's bread and water! C'mon! Don't make me do it! Andrew, like you, I'm a poetry lover. For the longest time it was EA Poe…but I've grown tired of him as a wornout, once beautiful cliché. I still respect him…but I'm taking a couple years break from him. I recently got over a Coleridge binge and am currently caught between a few poets. I think it's better that way…at least for a time. I'm always finding myself obsessing over one person, then the next. So I'm sipping on Lord Byron, Emily Dickenson (who after reading 10 or so of her poems years ago I thought was the most overrated, lousey thing ever…then I picked some more up and found I'd just unlucked upon the worst of the best!), a small collection of the Brontë's (including their brother!…who sucks! But it's interesting none-the-less)…and I want to try on some Tennyson soon. I've read some excerpts of his…and I love the romantic, overflowingness of what I heard…it's just my style…so I'll have to give that a go later. Anyways…not much in this reply about jobs…but this's the anything goes section…I'm just being conversational…and I like to explore both halfs of my duality as I'm 100% shy and quiet in person, and 100% outgoing and gregarious in writing…and now I'm off to work! Oh, Chuck…is your site the angelfishy one? Or am I confused…wait no…that's Andrew's right? Ok…nm. It's a very nice addition to the ever-growing online Gregg community Andrew! Hopefully, in the not too distant future, Greggory's site (if it's still named that then) will join the ranks! ./[tyler]
Yes, Tyler, I do program in FOCUS, a rather old language designed to make our COBOL flat files look and act like a real database. I taught C++ for a few years and liked it (perfect? well, you're pushing it!), used Pascal extensively, don't really like Java (but haven't used it). I generate all the statistical reports for HR and used to do pretty much the same thing for the Graduate School. I have an extensive background in statistics which, Chuck, qualifies me as "more boring"!
I think there's been a strong connection between calligraphy and shorthand as Andrew points out. I took classes in Copperplate, practiced for four years, and it looked good, but believe a Victorian child of 14 could have outshined me.
I'm impressed at how much you've got a hand in, Tyler. When do you sleep?
Marc
Accountant.
Excellent question to pose to this group! Thanks for starting the thread. I'm a professional interpreter (American Sign Language) and work primarily in higher education settings (bachelor through doctoral level) with Deaf students. I also do a fair amount of interpreting in non-educational settings (workplaces, physicians' offices, etc.) and am involved in Deaf ministry in church. I have reasonable competence in French, and am fluent in Esperanto. (I'm involved with the North American Summer Esperanto Courses, taught each year at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT–if anyone needs information you can e-mail me directly outside of this group). Interpreting is a second career for me. I'm a professional nurse (RN) and worked in administration for the Department of Veterans' Affairs for 22 years. I don't practice nursing at all now. (I also have a certificate in Teaching Handwriting from Zaner-Bloser . . . ) Interesting how some characteristics repeat here, huh? Alex
Repeat they do. I used Spencerian texts a couple years ago to help me switch to writing with my right hand. I took ASL up to level three. Kind of toyed with the idea of getting interpreter certified, but seeing as it was completely unrealted to my field, never pursued it further. I still love ASL and I always encourage people to take a course in it for three reasons: 1. It's fun. Classes are like a 1.5 hour charades game; you laugh the whole time. How many classes did you actually look forward to attending? 2. It's easy. No one ever takes home a grade lower than A in any ASL1 class. 3.It's useful. (a) You can talk to people in very quiet settings without disturbing others, such as in a library. (b) You can talk to people in very loud settings without shouting, such as in a club or airport. (c) You can talk about people "behind their back" right in front of their face; its like a secret code (sound familiar?). People sometimes say that sign language looks like a tiring language, with all the hand movements. I think it takes less effort for me to sign, than to speak. When I'm lazy, I sometimes sign to friends, just by reflex, instead of vocalizing. A sign is worth a thousand words, or a few at least. They get pissed off.
Great comments. A few points, though:
ASL is only easy at the beginning. Like Spanish or Russian or other
languages, it's not a huge challenge to learn basic conversational phrases
and basic vocabulary. But the language becomes very challenging in its full
range of active uses, and even students in interpreter training programs
often don't get a full sense of this before they graduate. The other
interesting and complex thing about ASL is the huge range of variation in
vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and usage. In the area where I live, for
instance, there are at least 4–maybe 5–signs for "rabbit" . . . and that
phenomenon goes on and on. An interpreter has to be prepared to at least
recognize them all, if not actively use them.
The other comment is about it being a "tiring language". It is, with
prolonged use. When I first started interpreting full-time, for 3 or 4
weeks I thought I had come down with some kind of neurological illness,
because at night my body was trembling and jerking when I tried to go to
sleep. It finally dawned on me that it was muscle fatigue from constant
arm, hand, head and body movements many hours a day. After that initial
period that problem went away, but it's still not unusual to arrive home
after 10 or 12 hours of work and be totally worn out.
Alex
I'm a minister, but am part of several community groups for which I act as secretary. I learned Forkner in high school, but have been trying to learn Gregg for the past couple of months for the sake of speeding up my note taking. (Has anyone else tried to make the transition between different types of shorthand? I still look at Gregg symbols and see the Forkner meanings first.) I'm also into music and computers. Jim
Forkner? You poor thing! You have my sympathies! The transition between shorthand systems is not an easy thing at all. You'll find the old stuff creeping in as you push for speed. BUT, you can overcome the other (shall I say "inferior"?) system with time and practice. For the record, the same goes with anyone trying to switch from one Gregg version to another. Some things will just flow out of your pen (OK, it's really out of your brain but. . . .) which fit the wrong system. Marc
Yes, Forkner is not the best, but it has served me well through the years, as has the typing course I took way back when real men didn't type. Now that the Gregg Anniversary manual is available, I've been working on it for about half an hour every morning, and have worked my way through the first few units in the book. Principles do translate, though symbols don't. (Hence, I'm forever seeing "ing" when I should be seeing "l" and "ent" when I should be seeing "g.") It's like everything else–it will take lots of practice. Had I only known in high school, I'd have taken Gregg.(But being Canadian, I don't think Gregg was an option–we had to choose between Forkner and Pitman. Forkner was a lot less complicated for someone who only wanted it for taking notes at university. *sigh*) Jim
The other day I saw the Canadian printing of the Anniversary Manual in E-bay. I bet is the same as the US one.
For a living, I am the manager of a small work group in a software and services company. During the 1970's and 80's I became fascinated with shorthand and how it has been used in the various languages of the world. I discovered that the epicenter of shorthand invention and knowlege was Germany. I had the privilege of corresponding with a few wise old-timers, now mostly deceased. I was able to put together a collection of publications, and published a couple of articles in little magazines. I lost touch for personal reasons, but finding this web site and others is reviving my interest.
Possibly the world's biggest collection of materials on shorthand–formany systems, in many languages–is the stengraphic section of the Saxon State Library (Sachsische Landesbibliothek) in Dresden. In my day, it was behind the Iron Curtain, but nowadays you can visit it, and I think that would be a really interesting experience.
Besten Gruess, Ed Jahn
It 's interesting to learn the diversity of this Gregg group. I have used Gregg continuously over the years and have found it to be indispensable. Although I have had a variety of jobs, most of my work has been in journalism. Even today, I work as a writer/editor in the Space program. Because I frequently do interviews for stories, I couldn't work without Gregg (I learned Simplified but now write pre-Anny). And, although a tape recorder is a helpful assist, I would never rely on it without shorthand notes. The minute you do, that's when things mechanical go awry, and where would your story, and your direct quotes, be without well-written shorthand? I also find shorthand extremely helpful in making telephone conversation notes on matters of importance or for information in need of recall. What's more, if you're in a boring meeting, you can even write your grocery list with none the wiser. As an aside, I had heard that in years past (not sure if it's still true) that a reporter couldn't get a job in England without shorthand skills. Makes sense to me. In spite of the technological world we live in, I wouldn't consider not using Gregg. It has a place!
Good day all, I can't believe how much common threads there are between us all!! I am a 45 year old single male now living in Iowa. I studied calligraphy in college and have been an avid fan ever since. I majored in mathematics and also studied piano and organ for many, many years. I went to Italy and became a computer programmer for an Italian company and stayed there for 14 years. While there, I even had the honor of playing the organ for Prince Charles and Diana on their 1985 Italy visit in Milan. I moved back to Iowa in 1997 and am now programming for a state health system. I still enjoy calligraphy and am now learning Gregg shorthand (DJS). I enjoy reading, playing the piano and organ, and also get into codes and cyphers and brain teasers. I am still at the beginning stages of shorthand and really appreciate the help that you all supply me. Looking forward to hearing from you all Mark pritchmj@ihs.org
Have any of you guys ('specially the ones interested in Secret Codes and Ciphers) ever thought about learning a very rare type of shorthand?
There are a number of systems to choose from.
I am intrigued, George, by your comments. Tell me more about the rare types of shorthand available!!! Thanks!!! Mark
I think I'll take this belated opportunity to tell you all a little about myself. I am a Staff Representative with the PA Federation of Teachers assigned to higher ed and schooldistrict unions in the Eastern part of the state. My background was as an elementary teacher. I founded the AFT Nationa Gay and Lesbian Caucus. I am also an original Phillie American Bandstand dancer from the Sixties and am licensed by Dick Clark to serve as Executive Coordinator of the ABRegulars Alumni Association which I founded handling both Philadelphia and West Coast Bandstand dancers (1952-1990). In the mid-eighties I decided to teach my elementary class shorthand. I gave them samples of Pitman and Gregg and they chose Gregg. I did a few thousand exercises in Simplified and then took to 1916 as my shorthand of choice. I am fascinated with the theory and principles of shorthand and am interested in other systems as well that for some reason did not catch on. I find the biographies on Gregg quite relevant when they tell of his personal sacrifices and trials in getting his system accepted and of chance neetings and lucky opportunites that gradually propelled him to success. Given the right circumstances some of these other systems might have enjoyed greater use and popularity.I enjoy Gregg very much but do not consider it perfect. Just look at all the questions that arise from this group and consider the not so obvious "Questions and Answers" put to Gregg himself back in the early Twenties. I agree with those of you who feel the revival of shorthand is far more important than winning converts to a particular system or manual. I am most grateful to John for giving us a website community as a fellowship, resource , support system and think tank! Thanks to all of you who have graciously served as sounding boards and critics of my various ideas. DOC
ShorthandMark:
Oh, heavens, there are a score of them. Some of them are Pitman modifications, some are just older Pitman versions, some are completely unrelated to Pitman, some are combinations of Pitman and Gregg, some are older sloping versions of Gregg, and some are completely unlike–anything.
I can tell you that the various Pitman systems "are not mutually intelligible!" I tested this, once. I sent an old Benn Pitman text to a modern-day Pitman writer. He replied,"All I can tell you is that it's something about education."
The non-Pitman and non-Gregg ones? Ok. Let's start with Sloan-Duployan. A modification of the Duployan system in France, it was used in Canada and the US. It looks like Pitman but with Gregg vowels attached. Number 2: there's something called "Personal Shorthand" that looks kinda geometric that was intended to be a diary-keeping system. There was "Thomas Natural Shorthand" in the 1940s. It had quite a following in the 1930s and 1940s but I believe WW2 but a damper on its expansion. There's "Eclectic Shorthand" by a man named Cross. Around 1900 it was written by about 15% of America's writers. I haven't seen Eclectic, but our Forum-mate ShorthandMarc says it uses "five different positions of writing". Can you imagine?
I could go on and on. You could learn old Benn Pitman Shorthand and not have one person on Earth be able to read it. Very early Gregg, I believe, as published by John Gregg in 1889, isn't intelligible to modern-day Gregg writers.
I hope this has helped!
Hope to see you soon.
Wow, five different positions in writiing!! I can't think of what they could be!! but would be curious in trying them out. Thanks for the info.
I hate to tell you, George and ShorthandMark, but I'm pretty sure that at least one of the other members of this group can read 1988 Gregg. Please own up, just to prove I'm not wrong! (That would be you, Andrew, and you Marc S, and maybe you, Chuck.)
Sidhetaba: not 1988 Gregg, but 1889 Gregg.
According to DangerArranger's site, the very first edition of Gregg had little to do with the Gregg published just 10 or 12 years later….
How timely! Just yesterday I received a real gem of Gregg-related memorabilia in my study of other shorthand systems: I.C.S.Library Volume 50 (about the size of a standard volume from an encyclopedia set put out in1905 by the International Correspondence Schools,Ltd., each volume apparantly devoted to one or two courses, this one to shorthand and typing courses). The first half of the volume is the entire course and background material on theory and technique of Script Shorthand attributed here to T. Stratford Malone. Sound familiar? The Gregg biographies tell how Gregg developed theory and an alphabet but was cheated by this slimy scoundrel out of coownership of the copyright and any financial profit from use of the Script system. Malone took credit for inventing the system developed by Gregg. I was surprised to see the familiar Gregg alphabet, but each symbol having a different letter equivalent than it has in Gregg. Yet the system is facile in connectibility, equally cursive while employing shading of parts of letters within their cursive outlines. Much of his early theory and principles are identical with Gregg's later writings. It is impossible to read these familiar (pretty ) looking words without a new orientation as to their different unfamiliar longhand equivalents. Script was quite popular in some schools in America and England at the turn of the century.
Doc, acually, several script (sloping) systems had been invented. In fact, one website asserts that Gregg's system was banned in England for quite some time, as it was judged by the English Courts as plagiarism of a system by a man named Gibson.
In fact, I'm desperately trying to find a copy of a book written by this man Gibson.
Here's the Synopsis:
MEMOIR OF SIMON BORDLEY, Author of "Cadmus Britannicus," 1787–The First Script System of Shorthand, with an account of all the Script, or Sloping-hand Systems of Shorthand in England by Roe, Adams, Oxley, Uppington, Aitchison, Cadman, Clarke, Rundell, Thompson, Anderson, Davies, Kingsford, Mares, Malone, Gregg (!!!), Callandar, and Gibson; ad. nauseum. BY JOHN WESTBY GIBSON, 1899.
DOC, it's a mistake to judge these men too harshly. The late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of snake-oil salesmen, real cocaine in Coca-Cola, legal morphine, no overtime, Fired-at-will workplaces, etc. In 1922, a group of strikers were shot down like dogs in West Virginia by pro-management forces.
In comparison with these shenanigans, the lies and plagiarism of the Shorthand camp (the Gregg and Pitman people all did it) seem tame, indeed….
DOC:
Your post concerning Malone's system was interesting, to say the least. It prompted some research on my part.
I've been studying the history of shorthand, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, the history is full of treachery, to put it mildly. Doc, according to my research, it appears that Gregg's system came after Malone's. There is a copy of Malone's Shorthand System at the Library of Congress. The copy's dated 1890, but it's a 14th edition. (Another website asserts that Malone's original publication was 1886). By contrast,John Gregg published his Light-Line Phonography in 1889, when he was only 20 years old.
Doc, where on earth did you locate the ICS materials? This is utterly fascinating. Those manuals must be quite rare…
George, I won the book in an ebay auction being the only bidder. You might want to take a look at Cowen's biography on Gregg. Gregg was a teenager when he began his research. According to this biography he developed the system but Malone excluded him from the copyright on Script. There are two biographies on Gregg. The one glosses over his negative experiences and heaps praise on his every achievement. Cowen's spends a lot of time on his penniless early career as well as presenting him as a poor judge of character. Many people who he trusted his buisness ventures to, embezzled and screw him royally! Yet with his increased fortune he helped needy employees and some old perpetrators when they fell on hard times. I found "Principles" most useful in understanding the Gregg system. When criticizing other successful systems, I don't buy into those apologetics. Some people like Fords, others Chevys; some like Gregg, others Pitman. There are problems with any brand of car or shorthand. Since I drive a Chrysler and use Gregg, I am most interested in them, but not naive to think that they are the be all and end all. You mention the fourteeneth edition of Malone. That simply means that every time they had a new batch printed that was another edition. I think Gregg was seventeen when he was used and betrayed by Malone, who by the way, came to Gregg for a handout in one financial crisis after another. I think a general stereotypical criticism of all shorthand authors is much more judgmental than citing data on two. DOC
DOC:
Yeah, you're right–there was so much backstabbing, drama, and theft in the Shorthand days that it qualifies as "soap-opera"; no joke. I've been studying it quite a bit.
It might have been a sign of the times. The 1800s and early 1900s were a time of no workers' rights at all. It was the survival of the fittest. Benn Pitman, who came to the US in the 1850s, screwed his own brother, Isaac, who'd invented the system. Benn changed a few of the characters, started his own company, and became the dominant shorthand system in America until the 1910s. What's funny is that one of Benn's own pupils changed a few of its characters, and screwed Benn! Graham's system became the N.2 system, which resulted in a very nasty plagiarism lawsuit in the 1870s.
What's most interesting about John Gregg, in my opinion, was his marketing strategy. His timing couldn't have been more perfect. WW1 brought a lot of women into the workplace; the big Pitman people had just recently died (Benn died in 1910.) Shorthand was marketed as a vocation, rather than a career, and Gregg saw this trend. His publishing company reached out to hitherto ignored high schools in the South, West, and Midwest, trying to show these high schools the wisdom of teaching Gregg Shorthand in high school (as opposed to Business School).
The strategy worked. By 1970, 90% of America's high schools were teaching Gregg. In this respect, Gregg was certainly a genius.
Pitman retained its dominance as a court reporting method until Stenotype took over later in the century, while Gregg was the favored method for secretaries, etc.
My God, DOC, I got carried away. But the history of Shorthand, to me, is at least as interesting as the subject itself.
DOC, if I were to look on ebay for those items, under what title would I look?
I
George, My usual routine consists of a daily look at Ebay "Buy it Now" (always before the auctions) for Shorthand, Gregg Shorthand and Pitman Shorthand (which sometimes lists Gregg stuff). The alternative shorthand stuff is usually under Shorthand. Once a month I view the foreign Ebay auctions and Abe.com (which takes about an hour to go through 50 or more pages) and occasionally look at Amazon. I often look for items under the foreign terms for stenography and have found some real international gems. Like you I find history and theory as fascinating as the stenographic systems themselves. I am not into the spinning of wheels over which period of Gregg is best. They are all reliable, though I prefer the supposedly most difficult l916. Learning shorthand forms is similar to acquiring a vocabulary in a foreign language. Some words are only used on rare occasions, but one should not write them off. In Gregg, if you momentarily forget a brief form, write as much as you need. As I stated once before, stenography texts followed the trend of other educational texts and assumed that each generation of students were less capable of memorization and simplified ad nauseam. Nobody is under pressure to learn shorthand on the job or in school, so one would think that most Gregg enthusiasts would want to master the most complete form of the system with as many brief forms and phrases as possible(the list is not infinite). Reality sets in and new enthusiasts introducing themselves to Gregg through their nearest book store find Simplified and Series 90 presently being sold. Then they discover our group and see Series 90 treated as inferior. How discouraging! The fact that Simplified is still being sold says something , the same for Series 90! I continue to suspect that one should stick with whatever Gregg materials you are studying , master them with confidence, and don't waste time looking for the elusive Holy Grail of shorthand without truly mastering any. Doc
I'm a college student–beginning my third year of music studies at Grinnell College, a liberal arts college in the middle of Iowa. I study piano, organ, and voice, along with composition and the usual courses. After spending high school as a dedicated computer geek (every other college I was accepted to, I was pre-registered into computer engineering–this liberal arts business was a lark!), I'm interested in information and its representation and manipulation. I've been fascinated to watch myself learn to read music and play piano over the past few years. This summer I got interested in writing, both music and English; I got a book from the library on music copying, bought the Shaeffer calligraphy pen the author recommended, enjoyed playing with it, bought a Waterman fountain pen, fell in love with it, and decided to learn to write properly… Wikipedia had an article on something that linked to the Shorthand article… and that, as they say, was that.