Being Left-handed in a Right-handed world
Baseball mitts, scissors and even classroom desks can be an inconvenience to the nearly 25 percent of the population who are left-handed.
“Things are just made for right-handers,” Bret Spencer, sophomore in electrical engineering, said. “When writing with a pencil, my fingers get covered in graphite,” he said.
Smearing lead or ink on assignments is just one of the common things left-handed people face every day. In college classes, only a few desks are made for left-handed people, and the rest cater to those who are right-handed.
“The right-handed desks are really hard to write on. You have to twist and contort your body to fit the desk when you’re writing,” Chelsi Woodcox, senior in elementary education, said. “It’s just really uncomfortable.”
The left-handed desks at USU are mostly located on the aisles
Brit Shepherd, senior in broadcast journalism, said she is used to sitting in a right-hander’s desk but finds a left-hander’s desk much better.
Junior in special education Kami Hogge said she doesn’t feel discriminated against but remembers when she was learning cursive in third grade and her right-handed teacher was trying to show her how to write.
“I remember it was dang tough. I mean, I think cursive is tough for anyone to learn, but when your teacher doesn’t even quite understand how to do it, it’s kind of hard to get that instruction from her,” Hogge said.
Now Hogge said she is is going to be a teacher and finds it difficult at times to direct lessons to all of her students. She said she recently had to adapt a lesson written for a right-handed teacher.
“I guess it affects your teaching,” Hogge said. “I hadn’t really thought about that.”
Beyond the classroom, everyday activities for students, like eating with friends, can be difficult.
Although Hogge said she has never asked to sit on the edge of the table while on a date, she said, “If I have a choice, I’d rather sit with my left elbow on a corner so I’m not bumping into someone.”
She said three out of five in her family are left-handed, and they adjusted the way they sit for Sunday dinner so they don’t bump elbows.
Some other everyday tools can be difficult for left-handed people to use, such as a can opener or a computer mouse.
Most people think the computer is versatile between right and left-handed people, but Woodcox disagrees. She said it would have been helpful to have a left-handed mouse, especially for art projects.
“If you want to paint something on the computer, it would be a lot easier if it was for the left hand,” she said.
Although there are constant negatives toward left-handers, some students said there are also pros to being left-handed.
Shepherd said she is a dancer and her dance group generally all did right splits in their routines.
“I kind of am glad now because I can do both sides (in splits) instead of just one,” Shepherd said.
Woodcox said being left-handed gave her high school sports teams an edge.
“No one else was good at the left-hand (basketball shots), and that would throw the other team off a little bit,” Woodcox said. “In soccer they needed someone with a really strong left kick, and so I got to be a left wing starting varsity my freshman year.
Many myths about left-handed people have been passed through the generations, Woodcox said, and some are false.
Woodcox’s grandpa is left handed and “in the olden days they thought being left-handed was evil,” she said. “They forced him to write with his right hand, but he does everything else with his left.”
Another myth is that left-handed people have a shorter lifespan and are more likely to get certain diseases, according to the article The Left-handed Advantage by ABC news in 2005.
“I’ve heard that we’re smarter because we use a different side of our brains,” Hogge said. “And I hope that that’s somewhat true because I could really use it going into midterms.”