Date field entry

Date field entry

In Date fields, it seems I am not able to just type in the date. The only option I have is to click on the mini-calendar widget that pops up. Am I missing something? That is INCREDIBLY tedious, especially when I want to put in a date from more than a decade ago. It takes me 30 seconds for each entry, when I could type it in 1 second. Can this be solved easily? Or is this a bug/design flaw? Thanks all.