Ah, 1994—when the internet was still a baby, floppy disks were the height of portable storage, and our idea of a “fast” computer was a 386 with a turbo button (that may or may not have actually done anything).
Our final exam in Journalism and Mass Communication included a computer science paper, featuring none other than WordStar—the word processor that was basically the ancestor of Microsoft Word, except with an interface that looked like it had a personal grudge against usability.
Enter Rocky, my batchmate and resident programming guru from NIIT. While the rest of us were wrestling with WordStar’s cryptic commands, he had already cracked the code—keyboard shortcuts! (Yes, children, there was a time before Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V became second nature.) Rocky showed me how to format documents like a pro, and in no time, I was flying through my assignment.
And because nothing in life is more satisfying than hacking the system (legally, of course), I turned my newfound knowledge into a classroom-wide rescue mission. Between Rocky’s tech genius and my fast learning (and possibly a bit of showboating), we ended up helping the entire class pass the exam.
Moral of the story? Keyboard shortcuts save lives. Also, sometimes, the real learning happens outside the syllabus—especially when you’re reverse-engineering an exam with a little help from a friend. 😏