SPRINGVILLE — Twelve-year-old Kaisa Goodman said she didn't stress about the test, because when she's stressed, it makes her fingers tense.
A key to being a top typist is being relaxed, she said.
She should know. Kaisa recently broke the Nebo School District's typing record with 137 words per minute — with no errors.
"My whole family was happy for me," Kaisa said.
At the beginning of her sixth-grade school year at Springville Middle School, Kaisa's keyboarding teacher, Dennis Lundgreen, set a 50-word-per-minute goal for the students in his class. While that goal may have seemed lofty to the other students — most of whom were typing around 17 words per minute — Kaisa's mom, Tiina, scoffed because she knew her daughter was typing faster than that without much practice.
"I was ahead of the class a little bit 'cause I can type fast," Kaisa said.
For the first time in Kaisa's life, she was being assigned keyboarding homework. Unless it was her favorite typing game — the computer tutorial, "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" — she didn't get too excited about it.
"It can be quite boring," she said.
Boring or not, the practice paid off when she more than doubled her previous word per minute score and broke the district record of 121 words per minute.
Kaisa said she doesn't always reach 137 words per minute, but she does average between 90 and 100 words per minute, a speed her mother describes as still "flying."
At that rate, she's well on her way to becoming the world's fastest typist, a title given to Barbara Blackburn, of Salem, Ore., by the Guinness Book of
World Records. Blackburn was clocked at 212 words per minute.
Despite her typing talent, Kaisa said what she really enjoys is playing sports, drawing and — of course — playing with her many friends. Like many girls her age, Kaisa uses online messaging systems to keep in contact with her friends, and many of them tell her they have a hard time reading as fast as she types.
Although Kaisa has always had a desire to learn, her mom thinks part of Kaisa's inspiration is her older brother, Mika, her only sibling. Although they are three years apart, Kaisa has always tried to keep up with her brother in school.
As for her future in a career involving typing, the idea of being an executive secretary is appealing to Kaisa because she presumes they must make good money. She says she doesn't see the need to make a definite decision right now.
"I'm not really thinking about jobs yet, but I want to go to Harvard," Kaisa said.
Sixth grade is when good study habits are developed, Kaisa said, that's why she has been working hard to maintain straight A's this year. Harvard is her dream school, and she doesn't want to risk not getting in.
"I've thought about it for a long time," Kaisa said.
Parents Tiina and Michael Goodman are fully supportive of this goal and proud of their daughter's most recent accomplishment.
"Too bad they don't give scholarships for typing," Tiina Goodman said, laughing.
E-mail: jelder@desnews.com