It all started when I was much younger. I’d say roughly when I was 5 or 6. My Grandmother had just gotten a new PC. It goes to say that me and my cousin instantly got hooked onto the PC. It wasn’t used too much except for everyday tasks but whenever it was our turn, we’d hop onto the PC and start playing games that we could find. It all started with multiplayer games, especially flash games like Fireboy and Watergirl and Kawairun. Those games were some of the best games we’ve played together and that strengthened our bond. However, it wasn’t until we got older and started finding more games. I’d say it was around 9 – 10 when we stumbled across the game that would strengthen my literary skills. ROBLOX.

          ROBLOX is a massive multiplayer game in which creators can create games for others to play. The game is targeted towards all ages and it’s the most popular website game currently. Having a PC, of course meant that I’d have access to a keyboard. Younger me was, of course, confused by the keys so I always stuck with the arrow keys when me and my cousin played games and such. Eventually, however, I started getting much more used to the keyboard. With this adaptation, I started typing and when you play an online game with a chatboard, you’ll, of course, interact with the community whether it be in a friendly light or an aggressive light. It all depended on who you ran into and what happened ingame. ROBLOX had definitely taught me how to type as it was something I had to do daily. The game didn’t teach me directly how to type but its kinda like if you do something over and over again and eventually it’s muscle memory. I definitely am much more fluent with typing than I was before. I don’t know my WPM but I know for a fact I can type fast as hell. It came from over years and years of typing and playing games using the keyboard. You can already tell how this can benefit me greatly. In the new age of technology where everything is practically a computer, you are pretty much obligated to know how to type or else you’ll probably be outclassed by others. Pen and Paper is in the past now. This connects with my school life with how I wasn’t always that efficient when it came to pen and paper. My handwriting is absolute garbage. It kinda looks like if you took the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes and gave him a paintbrush and locked him in a room for 30 minutes. Yeah, It’s bad. Unfortunately because of my poor handwriting, in Elementary and Middle School, Sometimes my teachers couldn’t even read my writing because it was so messy. It isn’t necessarily my fault, I wrote really fast and tried to get the assignments done. Something about me is I tend to overthink things and put too much detail into things, thus, if an assignment tends to ask for lets say one page, I might overwrite and most of the details inside said paper is just me over explaining things when I really don’t need to. I’d definitely say that the over-explaining wasn’t too big of a problem compared to the handwriting. I tend to perform much better on assignments that involve typing, just like this one. I gotta say, thanks to ROBLOX, I wouldn’t be this good of a typer. I grew up primarily with Computers around me. I play video games frequently and when my Grandmother bought me my first Laptop, I was absolutely braindead on that thing. It was literally my life and soul. That’s how much I was sucked into that thing. Having a PC improves my literary skills to the max. Arguably, it does more than a book would do for me personally. Not to knock on books as I have read some absolutely amazing books like The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton or the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series but I really gotta say that if I didn’t have computers around me when I was younger, I’d probably be absolutely clueless. It isn’t only the typing that develops my literary skills, it’s some of the content that I exposed myself to. A huge app that I still use today that definitely boosts my intellectuality is Youtube.

          I’m someone who enjoys learning if its done right and I have to say that I learned a ton while on Youtube. When it comes to Science or anything really interesting on the site, I take the time to watch said videos. You should already know that I was out here learning big sciency terms like the scientific names of Animals. Can you guess what a Canis lupus familiaris is? I’ll give you a hint, They are the most loyal animals on planet earth. Yes, It’s a dog. I always loved animals and watching science stuff definitely expanded my vocabulary much more. I honestly don’t know where I got my love for biology and animals from but it was definitely a given. Back to the topic of typing however, I think one of the apps that definitely maxed out my typing skills is Discord.

           I’m pretty sure you are familiar with Discord. If you somehow don’t know, it’s a social app for gamers primarily. You can add people and talk with them and such and create servers for multiple people to be in. I was exposed to Discord at the age of 12 or 13? One of my first friends who I am still friends with to this day introduced me to it and I’ve used it for over 5-6 years at this point. The app literally has you typing completely unlike ROBLOX in which you have to move around and actually play a game using like 6 keys in total. Discord definitely taught me how to type more efficiently and with the additive of playing a very social game, at this point, I can type without even looking at the keyboard or even the screen! My current PC setup is a dual monitor set and if I really wanted to I can honestly look at one monitor and type on the second monitor without looking. Infact, Ill even type a sentence right now without looking at the screen. Unfortunately, there will be no way for you to even validate that I’m going to do this so you’ll have to take my word for it. At this moment I am typing without looking at the screen. It is pretty crazy that I can do this without possibly making mistakes. Though, I won’t know if I made a mistake without looking at the monitor. I believe it’s pretty impressive that I was able to type 2 sentences without looking at the monitor. I only made one mistake and it wasn’t even a spelling one, I just spaced out the word ‘It’ and that’s really it. When it comes to typing specifically, when I reached Middle School, they attempted to teach us how to type. In middle school, they forced us to take a typing program. At the time, I was somewhat of a rookie when it came to typing. This program didn’t help with my case, to be fair it forced me to type in a somewhat uncomfortable way. Nowadays, I type in a mix of the way I was taught by my middle school and ‘beginner’ typing where I primarily use my indexes. They were pretty strict on how we typed in that school, of course, as everyone wanted to type the normal way they taught themselves, completely looking at the keyboard and not typing correctly. The thing is, the program wasn’t really engaging and on top of that, it taught us how to type in a way that is completely against the way people may have learned previously. It’s kinda like trying to learn to write with your opposite hand. Its simply not going to click as easily as they hoped to. I wouldn’t say that the typing form was COMPLETELY useless as I mentioned that I type in a mix of my own way and in that way but the only thing that it programmed into my mind was the idea of using my other fingers for typing. However, you can still type pretty proficiently with just your index fingers. It just takes practice and eventually, you’ll get it. I type primarily with my index fingers because it is just more comfortable but I still use my other fingers when I need to. It’s pretty crazy how something that I gained through my hobbies came to be so useful nowadays. Everything has changed since back then. Now, you rarely see any papers or pens in schools unless it’s probably in elementary school. Computers in general have a huge impact in society as a whole. If you don’t know how to type, as mentioned before, you definitely will have a harder time integrating to today’s society as almost everyone has a basis on how to type. Some people are simply better typers than others, however, it isn’t impossible to learn how to type and to use a computer. I can definitely say that with this generation, learning is much more widespread than it originally was. You can pretty much look up anything you want and get info on anything you want and that’s an amazing gift. Especially with the pandemic and quarantine, people have started to pick up new things and learn more through platforms like Youtube. The ability to learn online was always there, however, it wasn’t used as much as it is used now. It is something that I took advantage of while I was younger and growing up. Living in a small apartment in Spanish Harlem meant I can barely go outside because of how messed up my neighborhood can be and the only sort of freedom I have when it comes to going outside and such is when I go to my grandmother’s house in Long Island. I’m primarily here in my mothers house and with that, I teach myself many things thanks to the internet. The fact that my father isn’t around too much since I live here in my mothers house, I had to pretty much teach myself how to do certain things. I partially taught myself how to shave and do other things that normally my father is supposed to teach me. My father is crippled, as he has a neck injury that leaves him bed ridden for a majority of the time when Im around him, so its hard for him to teach me things like shaving and such so thanks to the internet and stuff like that, I am freely able to learn how to do stuff like that just by reading articles or watching videos. I can safely say that when it comes to my computer, I was able to learn about nearly everything that I needed to learn throughout my time living. Its a amazing tool that serves as an entertainment device along with a learning device, especially when it comes to the literary portion of it.

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