I finally got to do some CART work. My first day, I wound up covering four events. Two classes, one bidder's meeting that ran short, and one council meeting that I covered the last hour of because it ran long. I wound up working from about 8 in the morning until 11 at night, trying to get all the transcripts out. It was a crazy day.
I was supposed to cover a class the next day, but it got cancelled. I did a couple the day after that, and that was last week. I did another one this morning. I haven't officially checked my accuracy, but it's looking good. I didn't have any drops, and everything made sense. I think the semester's about to end, though. There might not be any classes to cover after this week.
It took me less than the length of the class to edit my transcript today. It probably shouldn't take as long as it does, but I like to go through and global everything, and make the transcript look perfect. It'll take less time the more practice I get.
I'm also trying to focus on practicing for the CBC. That's been going well. The 180 takes are a lot easier this time around than they were in January. I'm just trying to focus on staying calm. Lots of times I've written a take for the first time, and thought I didn't get it, but I did. So that's giving me confidence to just keep focusing, keep going, and know that there's a real possibility that even though it doesn't feel like it, I might pass the take.
I finished -i endings, and I'm working on 1765 for -o now. I don't remember why I wrote down that I need to work on -o. I write it "OE," which hasn't changed. But it doesn't hurt to write a bunch of words; lots of them aren't defined the way I'm writing them.
I found a bizarre dictionary hole. "Pens" wasn't in my dictionary as PENZ, and it translated as "ends." I also discovered, during CBC practice, that I need to take out my glue stroke when I take the test. I have it in as DRA*ES, since I use it before a web address. DRAES is just "address." I wrote DRA*ES in a take without realizing it, and glued the entire rest of the take together! That would've been an instant fail.
I'm still working on positioning. My left arm still isn't cooperating. I can almost never seem to get it in a position that's comfortable. I don't know what the problem is, but I wish I knew what to do about it, because it makes it really hard to write for more than about 10 minutes at a time. It's supposed to be so much better to write on the LS, but it's just not working.
It didn't work on the Stentura, either, so it's not the LS' fault, but I know I would write a lot better if I could ever get the positioning down. It's gotten to the point where I dread having to CART a class because I know it's going to hurt. It shouldn't be that way, but I just don't know how to fix it. It only hurts when I write, so it's got to be something about the way I sit or hold that arm when I write. I don't have any problem at all with the right arm. If only I could figure it out!
4.20.13
I have had a couple of minor successes. I seem to be writing faster when I "talk to myself" during practice. It used to be always around 150, but now it's consistently getting up to 214. Maybe that's a sign of a faster writing mentality overall. I'm also getting better at realizing that a word probably isn't in my dictionary - or at least not the way that first comes to mind to write it - and fingerspelling it on the fly. I did a great job getting Adriatic and panacea like that the other day, without skipping a beat.
I also had the brilliant idea to start defining things that I often immediately dash, like cruise for crews. Crews is supposed to have an asterisk, and lots of times I'll remember that - right after I stroke cruise. So I defined "cruise -- crews" as "crews." I've done that with about 40 entries now. It hasn't actually helped yet, but it should in theory. According to the dictionary, the only stroke like that I've ever actually used is H-F D-RB, which would be me stroking a hyphen followed by a dash, which I wanted to translate as only a dash. Since creating it a month ago, I've used it 14 times. Apparently I write "hyphen dash" a lot.
I'm also trying to fix a problem where I'll write something, know or hear that a new speaker is coming up, stroke the >>, and then read that something in the previous speaker didn't translate properly. I have time to fix it, but not time to delete the >> and fix it, and without thinking, I just dash and fix it. It's weird, though. The new speaker isn't saying the correction. I have to just let it go. I'm past the point where it makes sense to fix it. So, what I'm trying to do is wait until everything tranlates out before I stroke the >>. I'm not having much success with that yet.
I finished all my -ia corrections, and now I'm working on 1086 entries that end in "i." I put most of these things on my list so long ago I don't remember exactly what was wrong with them anymore. Back in my "defining suffixes" days, I defined all the "-i"s as consonant + I + *P, so -ni is N*IP. I was really only intending to use it for name-building, but I use it for pretty much everything now. Unfortunately, nothing is defined that way, so it creates a lot of problems.
Step Back
I don't know why stenography has to be such a two steps forward, one step back kind of deal. Every time I think I'm getting somewhere, there's a setback. I felt like I was making real progress with my realtime. I was becoming more aware of what I wrote as I was writing it. FREX, I wrote "BLOGD," and it didn't tran, so I wrote BLOG/D, easy as pie, during realtime. I felt like I was understanding better, as I wrote, why things weren't translating them, and I was getting better at fixing them without getting tripped up.
I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.
She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.
I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.
I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.
I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"
I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.
I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.
She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.
I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.
I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.
I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"
I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.
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