I’ve always taken pride in my lettering. Architects (that can letter) usually do.
It’s a totally anachronistic skill, though it did pay for 2.5 years of my life in Berkeley, so it’s not nothing. Then again, that was also almost two decades ago, and it was an anachronistic skill then.
It’s not a hard skill one to learn, maybe ten hours at a drafting table and you’ll have it for the rest of your life, as long as you keep up the practice. Even so I would agree its a waste of young students’ time to force them to letter. There’s nothing practical to be gained from it.
But there is some value in being able to letter. Most of the time, my handwriting is either a god awful train wreck to a cursive-print when I’m dressing up a personal note card to a friend.
However, when I’m handwriting a something to another architect, I sit up straight, make sure the pen is seated correctly in my hand, take a breath, and I letter.
In those moments, what I say is less important than how I say it. Beyond the gesture of sending a handwritten card, my handwriting is signaling that I am part of the profession, part of the tribe, one of us. I am how I write. Here I am.