I completely agree with you!

As someone who has dysgraphia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia), I have faced this problem so many time in school. Luckily in India esp. in my state, if you have Dysgraphia, you could use a scribe and dictate your answers at least for major examinations.

I am happy that even though I am in a grad school, I now rarely have to write anything.

Oh weird, my handwriting looks almost exactly like the "motor dysgraphia" sample and I seem to have a good number of the symptoms of motor dysgraphia (pretty much everything except the spelling mistakes and talking to myself while writing). I never realized it might a "thing" before.

I wonder if it has to do with the fact that I was born left-handed and retrained to be right-handed as a kid?

Interestingly I don't see anything wrong with the 2nd half of the motor dysgraphia sample. I have tons of friends who write like that. Here's an example of George Carlin's handwriting:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/04/romantic-mr-carlin.html

I don't think you can take that alone as a symptom. The pain should be pretty indicative though.

Yeah, I definitely get the pain part. Actually, I should be pretty thankful because it's my aversion to handwriting that made me spend a lot of time on the computer, leading to my entire career. :)

FYI, writing caused me pain if I did it for more than a line or two, and was always a slow and laborious process. It turned out I'm predisposed to RSI -- a load of vitamin B6 plus learning to write cursive italic, plus switching to fountain pens really improved my writing and eliminated the pain.

Everything is a "thing" now days :)

Actually, I doubt that any cursive standard really applies and I think everyone sort of does their own thing anyway, even the most anal teachers.