Clickable dictation at various speeds is available at the bottom of this page. The transcript of the dictation appears here as well.
Happy new year, everyone! This is a "how to keep your job" piece, probably a good thing given our economic times. But if you're a decent shorthand writer, I'm sure you'll find you're quite valuable to your employer not only because of your added shorthand skill but the higher-level of language skills you bring to your position. It is said that as shorthand usage in offices waned, businesses used shorthand speed to gauge an applicant's language knowledge: the higher the speed, the more likely the applicant was well versed in grammar, spelling, etc. So crank up that shorthand speed and start listing it on your resume!
Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified, Functional Method, Leslie and Zoubek, Gregg Publishing Company, 1949, p 313-315
506. Have you ceased to study?
A number of years ago, a man named Brown and a man named Black graduated from high school and entered business. Both made rapid progress. At twenty-five they were making fine salaries.
“Coming men,” said their friends. “If they are so far along at twenty-five, where will they be at fifty?” Black went on. Af fifty, he is president of his company, with an income of $50,000 a year.
But something happened to Brown. He never fulfilled the large promise of his youth. At fifty he had hardly advanced beyond the point at which he was at thirty.
What was it that happened to these two men of equal education and, so far as the world could judge, equal ability? I will tell you. Brown was inclined to be lazy. He ceased to study, lost his enthusiasm, and ceased to grow.
Black has told me that when he reached $5,000 a year, he said to himself: “I have been able to make a good start. Nothing can stop me from going forward if I keep my health and keep growing. I must study, study, study. I must be the best-informed man on our business in the United States.”
There is the difference. One stayed in school; the other didn’t.
The position you attain before you are twenty-five years old is of no particular credit to you. You gain that simply on the education your parents give you—education that required no sacrifice from you.
However, the progress you make in the world after twenty-five—that is the progress that you must make by educating yourself.
Really big men check themselves at the beginning of a new business year. “This year,” they say, “I am going to master one new subject. I am going to pursue such and such studies, which will increase my ability and my earning powers.”
The bigger they are, the longer they keep themselves in school.
When you leave school, what definite subject are you planning to study in your evenings? How much will your increase your stock of useful information in the next year?—Bruce Barton
For more information on shorthand speed building, click here.
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