“Left-handed desk.” These words are stenciled on a desk that floats around in Physics 3.

It is clearly meant for the minority group that uses it.

Being a lefty puts you at odds for many things.

In fact, “left-handed compliment” means an insult, and throughout history the devil has been said to be lurking over the left shoulder.

And tailor-made desks, labeled or not, are hard to come by. But lefties don’t have it all that bad.

At least now.

Years ago, children were forced to be right-handed, said Corly Brooke, associate vice provost of the Center for Teaching Excellence. If they tended to naturally favor their left hand, they were punished, and coerced to switch, she said.

This led to many negative effects, such as speech problems, learning disabilities and bad handwriting skills, Brooke said.

Stanley Coren, author of “The Left-Hander Syndrome,” said five percent of people are strongly left-handed, 72 percent strongly right-handed and the remaining 22 percent are mixed-handed, he said.

Peter Johnson, graduate student in mechanical engineering, considers himself left-handed, but by Coren’s standards, would probably be mixed-handed. He usually eats and plays guitar right-handed, yet writes, throws, and golfs left-handed.

Today, the percentage of people considering themselves left-handed is about 10 percent worldwide.

Despite the modern Western acceptance or tolerance of left-handed people, there are still certain stereotypes.

Lefty Geoffrey Abelson, professor of curriculum and instruction, feels most of the stereotypes are nothing but “old wives’ tales” created by someone trying to feel better about their own handedness.

Some have believed that left-handed people are clumsier than their right-handed counterparts.

Karen Mullaney, a physical therapist at Mary Greeley Medical Center, does not agree.

“An accident is an accident,” Mullaney said. They are often due to carelessness, not clumsiness.

“Coordination is a learned behavior,” Mullaney said. Even in a right-handed world, “lefties are pretty adept” and quickly learn to use various right-handed tools at an early age.

There are daily disadvantages for left-handed people. On campus, desks seem to be the most noticeable of these problems.

“There are so few in the classrooms,” Abelson said.

Ten to 20 percent of the total seats in classrooms are designed for left-handed people, said Katie Baum gar, program coordinator of Facilities Planning and Management. The percentage tends to depend on factors such as spacing between seats, accessibility, seating comfort and room seating flexibility. Larger rooms, such as lecture halls, tend to have a higher percentage of left-handed desks, she said.

In Physics Hall, the lefty desks are anchored to the second row. In Lush Auditorium, the left-handed desks are on the aisles. In 101 College of Design, there are no left-handed desks, because the desktops has a large enough area to accommodate people of either handedness.

Finding desks isn’t that big of a deal for some lefties. Ableson said though it was annoying and there never seemed to be enough desks, he learned to adapt wherever he sat down.

Brent Boots, junior in construction engineering, agreed that seeking out left-handed desks isn’t an issue.

He sits where he wants to, and if there is no one using the desk to his left, he’ll use the desk next to him. Otherwise, using a right-handed desk is no big deal, he said.

For others, finding a left-handed desk is a priority.

Johnson, a self-proclaimed “left-handed patriot,” feels one of the biggest daily nuisances is classes that the left-handed desks are in areas of the classroom he prefers not to sit.

Baumgarn said left-handed desks are “spread throughout the seating” and “usually on the end of a row.”

This tends to make finding a seat easier, rather than hiding it in among the other seating, Baumgarn said.

Still, Johnson has been known to rearrange classrooms.

“I have moved desks to places where I prefer to sit,” Johnson said.

The location and prominence of left-handed desks isn’t the only problem lefties face every day.

The legibility of handwriting can be a problem if students are not taught to tilt the paper with the lower left corner tilted up, said Janet Heintz, occupational therapist for the Ames Area Education Agency.

This causes the slant of the handwriting to be opposite of the right-handed majority, but makes writing much more comfortable.

This tilt seems to also help prevent the hooked hand that sometimes develops when lefties attempt not to smear or cover what they just wrote, Heintz said.

“I haven’t written in pencil in a long time,” Johnson said. “The lead smears all over my hand.”

The hooked position of writing might not be preventable, Brooks said.

Studies have shown that hooked left-handed writers, despite their bilateral language skills, tend to have more language skills in the left lobe of the brain. This is the same side as right-handed language skills, Brooks said. Handedness has a direct connection to the brain, but the exact reason for left or right-handedness is unknown.

Whatever the reason, left-handed people either think little of their minority status, or, like Johnson, seem to take pride in it.

“I’ve always wanted to be unique in some way, so being left-handed separates me from the norm in some little way,” Johnson said.