Gay Talese, author

In my high-school typing class, taught by a buxom woman who resembled Eleanor Roosevelt, we used Royal Standard machines and were taught to close our eyes and type to the rhythm of a cha-cha number. I don't know why I was the top typist in the class, but the teacher said I had long, lissome fingers and that I should have been a pianist or perhaps a middle-infielder.

After graduating from college, I came to New York to apply for a newspaper job. During my interview with The Times' personnel director, I was asked if I could type. I said I probably held the world record for speed typing. I was asked to prove it, and though I missed the record by an hour, the personnel director gave me a job as a copy boy in the newsroom.

I still use some of the typewriters I used 50 years ago. What I learned as a sophomore in high school still serves me well today on my typewriter, my I.B.M. electric and the Apple laptop I am using now. There is nothing so useful that I learned, carried from the middle of one century to the next, as what I am doing now, typing.

Amy Klein, guitarist, Titus Andronicus

I volunteer as a guitar teacher and a band coach at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. It's totally punk. Many of the girls have no prior musical experience -- and that's the point: We present them with a challenge and encourage them to grow.

I was coaching a band of 8-year-olds. On the day of the concert, the lead singer was suddenly overcome by stage fright. "I don't want to do this anymore," she whispered. I told her that she would be amazing and that her bandmates needed her right now. About a minute before the performance, I finally asked: "What would make you feel safe right now?" She responded: "If you held my hand." I stood in the wings with my arm outstretched, the singer holding on.

When it was time for the chorus, she chimed in, at first shyly, then louder. By the end of the chorus, she had let go of my hand. She ran out to the center of the stage, and an enormous cheer swept through the crowd. Hundreds of hands clapped to the beat. Fists were raised. Eyes teared up. A huge smile broke out on the singer's face. She had grasped what it is to feel powerful.

Patterson Hood, guitarist and lead singer, Drive-By Truckers

I was a terrible student from about third grade on. I started writing songs at about that exact same time, which couldn't be a coincidence. I wrote a thousand songs by the time I graduated from high school. I would hear a song on the radio and try to write one like it. It was the 1970s, and I loved Elton John and Neil Young.

I had their music in my head, and I would sit in class and write songs all day, every day, instead of listening to my teachers. I made up names for imaginary bands and drew rough sketches of what their album covers should look like. By the sixth grade, I was writing songs for about half a dozen fictional bands, including a funk band, a prog-rock band, a metal band and a country band. I've always considered that to be my education -- an education in fantasy and imitation.