Secretarial skills

Southampton Row was Pitman's flagship college

London life down the Pit

I guess nowadays you'd try to get on reality TV or take off to warmer climes for a few gap years, but when London-RIP was growing up, the default option for girls without an obvious career path was a bit more prosaic - you became a secretary.

For this, you needed to learn shorthand and typing and the most established place to do so in London was Pitman's Secretarial College in Southampton Row. The Pitman organisation had other colleges both in London and outside, but this was its flagship, housing its admin as well as classrooms for the likes of us.

Stairway to secretarial skills

The building, which is in the next block from the Hotel Russell, looks pretty impressive from the outside. I went there circa 1980, and remember a rambling structure, about five storeys high with our classrooms at the top of a series of winding staircases - and no lift. As the lifts at Russell Square Tube station were often broken, mornings were pretty breathless affairs.

Home for Solanes

The secretarial students themsleves were an odd assortment of Sloaney types yah-ing their way through every course in London, girls filling in time before they went to college and a few people who actually wanted to be secretaries. The only man present was an ancient court stenographer who came in occasionally to demostrate his customised hieroglyphics to an audience who received his wisdom with varying degrees of interest.

We learned shorthand (2000), office skills, which we thought we were far too clever to benefit from, and touch typing (on nightmare, hair-trigger electric machines). I brushed up on the latter at Sight and Sound in Tottehnam Court Road, where they taught audio typing, and which is also long gone.

Dawning of a new era

Pitman closed the Southampton Row centre circa 1990, although the now-franchised training organisation has an outlet in High Holborn. It still teaches shorthand - as well as spreadsheets, IT etc, but I think the days of long, leisurely secretarial courses are gone, and I certainly don't come across many people who can do 2000 or New Era - it's all Teeline (pah!).

Myself, I was a lousy secretary but I can still touch type and do shorthand, which have, as my mother annoyingly predicted, come in incredibly useful. So those days toiling down the Pit weren't entirely wasted.

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Date and time:	04/02/2012 at 19:00:17
Sender:	Conserved signaling pathways

Conserved signaling pathways that activate the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are involved in relaying extracellular stimulations to intracellular responses. The MAPKs coordinately regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, motility, and survival, which are functions also known to be mediated by members of a growing family of MAPK-activated protein kinases (MKs; formerly known as MAPKAP kinases). The MKs are related serine/threonine kinases that respond to mitogenic and stress stimuli through proline-directed phosphorylation and activation of the kinase domain by extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 and p38 MAPKs. There are currently 11 vertebrate MKs in five subfamilies based on primary sequence homology: the ribosomal S6 kinases, the mitogen- and stress-activated kinases, the MAPK-interacting kinases, MAPK-activated protein kinases 2 and 3, and MK5. In the last 5 years, several MK substrates have been identified, which has helped tremendously to identify the biological role of the members of this family. Together with data from the study of MK-knockout mice, the identities of the MK substrates indicate that they play important roles in diverse biological processes, including mRNA translation, cell proliferation and survival, and the nuclear genomic response to mitogens and cellular stresses. In this article, we review the existing data on the MKs and discuss their physiological functions based on recent discoveries. Cells recognize and respond to extracellular stimuli by engaging specific intracellular programs, such as the signaling cascade that leads to activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs). All eukaryotic cells possess multiple MAPK pathways, which coordinately regulate diverse cellular activities running the gamut from gene expression, mitosis, and metabolism to motility, survival and apoptosis, and differentiation. To date, five distinct groups of MAPKs have been characterized in mammals: extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs) 1 and 2 (ERK1/2), c-Jun amino-terminal kinases (JNKs) 1, 2, and 3, p38 isoforms α, β, γ, andδ , ERKs 3 and 4, and ERK5 (reviewed in references 25 and 103). Since Saccharomyces cerevisiae possesses six different MAPKs, the relative complexity of the human genome suggests that there are probably several additional vertebrate MAPK subfamilies (118). The most extensively studied groups of vertebrate MAPKs to date are the ERK1/2, JNKs, and p38 kinases. MAPKs can be activated by a wide variety of different stimuli, but in general, ERK1 and ERK2 are preferentially activated in response to growth factors and phorbol esters, while the JNK and p38 kinases are more responsive to stress stimuli ranging from osmotic shock and ionizing radiation to cytokine stimulation (reviewed in reference 147) (Fig. 1). Although each MAPK has unique characteristics, a number of features are shared by the MAPK pathways studied to date. Each family of MAPKs is composed of a set of three evolutionarily conserved, sequentially acting kinases: a MAPK, a MAPK kinase (MAPKK), and a MAPKK kinase (MAPKKK). The MAPKKKs, which are serine/threonine kinases, are often activated through phosphorylation and/or as a result of their interaction with a small GTP-binding protein of the Ras/Rho family in response to extracellular stimuli (36, 98). MAPKKK activation leads to the phosphorylation and activation of a MAPKK, which then stimulates MAPK activity through dual phosphorylation on threonine and tyrosine residues located in the activation loop of kinase subdomain VIII. Once activated, MAPKs phosphorylate target substrates on serine or threonine residues followed by a proline; however, substrate selectivity is often conferred by specific interaction motifs located on physiological substrates. Furthermore, MAPK cascade specificity is also mediated through interaction with scaffolding proteins which organize pathways in specific modules through simultaneous binding of several components.

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Date and time:	11/07/2011 at 10:48:28
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Date and time:	24/06/2011 at 06:45:12
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Date and time:	24/05/2011 at 09:04:02
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Date and time:	14/04/2011 at 14:48:39
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Message:	25/34
Date and time:	16/11/2010 at 16:25:51
Sender:	Desperate

As everyone knows, things are getting a little bit harsh. Recently applied for a job but then they came back and asked why I had no qualifications for typing. I do and went to the Sight & Sound College in Tottenham court road in 83 or 84. Enjoyed myself immensely - especially my lunches in the park. Anyway, does anyone know how to get the certificates for typing, shorthand and audio please. Oh, one last thing, I really enjoyed reading the snippets of life - it's true, touch typing is a dying art and one that I continue to use and once I get my certificates intend to use even more.