Haha, I remember I saw something somewhere when I was in college that made a joke about that. I too always loved the "yay" feeling when I would write in single space and then pop to double space and magically the paper was almost done lol.

I know what you mean, I love that feeling too.

When I was in college, I had to use a typewriter...... I would have given anything to have a word processor. They simply weren't affordable when I was in college.

I remember cutting up papers, so that I could insert paragraphs without having to type the entire thing over. If you left something out, you either had to literally "cut and tape" the thing back together, or type it over.

I had professors who wouldn't accept taped together papers, so you were stuck with retyping those. There were people who would type papers for others for a fee and they made good money.

I'm dating myself.

All my professors specify EXACTLY what font type, font size, and spacing are required for their classes. No one has an excuse of saying "But the 14-font double spacing IS 20 pages, just like you wanted!"

All my professors specify font, spacing, margins, etc and we normally turn in digital copies, so they can actually check it if they wanted.
I have heard of some people changing spacing by like +.1 so it adds tiny bits of white space no one notices, even though it adds lots of length.