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How Typing Taught Me Self-Reliance
I was 16 when I took my first typing class. It was 1963 and I was a sophomore at Samoana High School in Pagopago, American Samoa. I had dreamed of one day becoming a stenographer for the courts, so I was excited to learn how to use the Underwood model typewriters in my new class.
You had to have strong fingers to push down the keys of the Underwood. Learning to type without looking at my hands was tough, and when my fingers slipped and got caught between the type levers—ouch! But typing was fun, and I continued to take it throughout high school. I had no idea back then just how well my typing skills would serve me for the rest of my life.
I made my way to Church College of Hawaii, a university owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now known as Brigham Young University–Hawaii Campus, CCH is where I found my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and made the pivotal decision to become a member of His church.
CCH is also where my typing skills helped me to earn a bachelor of science degree in business education, with a minor in secretarial sciences. I also picked up a teaching certificate, and for my first job after university, I became the typing teacher.
I taught typing and various business-related subjects at the Church-owned high school in Pesega, Samoa, and then at Kahuku High when I returned to Hawaii a few years later.
In the mid-1980s, now with a young family in tow, I moved to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. I continued to teach typing there, first at the local high school and then at the island’s only community college, where I got the exciting opportunity to set up their first ever computer lab. What a challenge! I eventually got the hang of computers and before long, all my students were learning to type on a computer keyboard.
My newfound computing skills proved critical for the next leg of my career. In the early 1990s, I set up another first computer lab, this time at Aorere College in Papatoetoe, Auckland, New Zealand. My husband and I then spent our final working years running a small, Samoan-language newspaper in Auckland, where my job was to type up and lay out our publication for printing. Everything I did was on the computer, and every task relied on my ability to type.
In my 70s now, I’m retired from regular employment, but I still take the occasional job as a Samoan language translator. Like much of the world these days, this work is based online, so I am in no danger of losing the typing skills I’ve honed over a lifetime.
As I reflect on the many blessings I’ve enjoyed through the humble trade of typing, I am in awe of the divine wisdom in Heavenly Father’s commandment for us to be educated, to gain skills that will help us earn an income and to strive for self-reliance. But obedience to this commandment doesn’t only provide temporal rewards. It has brought me so much joy to see the skills I taught bring positive changes into the lives of my students. My teaching experience has also helped me become a better learner and sharer of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Lord said, “Wherefore . . . not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal . . .
“For my commandments are spiritual” (Doctrine and Covenants 29:34–35).
I am especially grateful for how my typing skills have strengthened my testimony that God loves His children and has given us the tools we need to take care of ourselves and each other. That, to me, is the true definition of self-reliance.