I got a rejection letter from one of the companies I applied to a while ago. I sent them a realtime sample from when I did meeting minutes for the water district. They said my accuracy was decent (98.7%), but they didn't want to hire me because I had too many commas. Commas! I just took it to mean that they're not looking to take any beginning CART providers under their wing, so to speak. They're only interested in hiring people who could go out and work with no modifications. Which is fine. But I really could've just written fewer commas, if I had known ahead of time.
It's something to think about in my writing, though. I do tend to put in a comma when someone pauses. I try to look at CART from a consumer standpoint, a readability standpoint. If the professor is one of those that's constantly going "right? all right?", I don't put it in. I hate hearing it all the time, so I wouldn't want to read it all the time, either. Excessive utterances like "um" and "uh" don't need to be in there, eunless I need to convey what type of speaker they are, which isn't really necessary with a professor.
I've always written punctuation. There hasn't ever been a point in my training when I didn't think it was necessary. So, of course I punctuate things. But I never really thought about having too many commas. I just figured it was the way people talked, so it was okay. But I guess I need to look at it more aggressively from a readability standpoint, and write it the way it makes the most sense, not necessarily the way it was said. If they're going on for too long, I can break it up into two sentences. If they paused in the middle of a thought, and it looks better without the comma, I don't have to write it.
On a less disappointing note, I've been impressed with a lot of words that are in my dictionary. It's fun to just stroke out names like "Gunther" and "Mahoney" however I think I should, and have them actually translate. Same thing with some technical terms, like "thermosphere" and "ventricles." The technical stuff isn't always in there, but when it's not, it either looks close enough, or I can fingerspell it.
I also had an awesome breakthrough the other day. I have to have the cursor in a certain window to stream the CART, so I thought I couldn't have Eclipse up. But I figured out that the window with the cursor in it isn't really important for me to see, and I can make it tiny, and make Eclipse big enough to see. There was a huge delay with the CART getting to the cursor window, and it made it really hard to edit as I was writing.
But now, I can watch it in Eclipse, just like when I practice. It comes up instantly, and I can fix any mistakes right away. It actually tired me out a little the first time I did it. I wound up writing more because I didn't have to wait so long to see if what I was writing came out right or not.
CBC Strike Three
I went into this test with a more chill attitude. I did great on all my practice takes. I did about 10, and I got them all on my first try with 96% or better accuracy. I wasn't super rushed leaving the apartment, or getting set up. I was the first one there last time, but about three people beat me in this time.
I didn't practice any of my words this time; I didn't have time. There was practice material playing the whole time, so I tried it out, but I didn't do very well on any of it. The words for the test were super easy this time. I think last time it was something like Harley, and some other weird stuff, but this time it was just William, piano, Canada, and Hawaii. Hawaii is super easy for me to write. Canada's fine, so I decided it would only trip me up to write a brief for it. William trips me up sometimes (I'm supposed to put an asterisk in the YAM part), and so does piano, so I made an easy brief for both of those.
I didn't really feel comfortable with my writing at any point. I was super nervous during the 1-minute warm up. I tried to just be relaxed and calm. My mouth gets really tense when I get to tricky parts to write, and it was tensing up right away, so I tried to just relax it. That seemed to help a little. I just got like a deer in the headlights again. My hands wouldn't do what I wanted them to, and the more I tried to force it, the stiffer they got. I managed to keep going, but it wasn't good writing.
I couldn't stop thinking about things, and being upset that I had blown it already and it wasn't working. My fourth minute was great for some reason. I calmed down and wrote everything perfectly. It just kept going on forever, and I psyched myself out, and made some mistakes in the last minute. I didn't pass. Maybe next time. I forgot to use my brief for William, and then remembered, and screwed myself up by deleting "will" and writing my brief. I wrote "C*AN" for Canada instead of "CAN/D*A," so that cost me two points, since "C*AN" comes out as ^can.
It wasn't a hard test. The words were easy, the speed was slow. Easiest test you'll ever fail, for sure. It sucks that I have to wait until November to take it again. Doing it twice a year makes the pressure way worse. I don't know why they only let us have one take. Even if they would do 15 minutes of audio and pick a random 5-minute sample to grade, it would be better.
I got to do the CBC first this time, instead of having to listen to the CRR first. I liked that better, but then it was really boring sitting and waiting for the CRR to finish. I don't like that I have to send a SASE with my flash drive. I think I pay enough for the test that they could send it back to me for free.
Failing the CBC sucks. It's such a huge disappointment, especially when you know there's no reason you shouldn't have passed it. I might try watching the screen next time. I thought it would throw me off, and I would get freaked out when I saw mistakes, but it's really weird not watching it. Maybe if I had the usual distraction of reading as I write, my mind wouldn't be so free to freak out. I'll try it out when I start practicing in October and see how it goes.
I'd kind of like to sit for the state court reporter exam, just so I have some kind of certification. It's two 7-minute QA takes at 200 wpm. You transcribe whichever one you want, and they grade a random 5-minute part of it. It's so totally different from captioning/CART, though, and I don't have any practice material. I hate RTC. The material is so dense. Even at 180 wpm it takes me like 6 times to get 96% on a take. I want some nice, normal stuff to practice. It's also hard to rationalize sitting for, because it's in October, and the CBC is in November. I know I can pass the CBC, so it's hard to take the CR exam when I'm just about to, theoretically, pass the CBC.
I didn't practice any of my words this time; I didn't have time. There was practice material playing the whole time, so I tried it out, but I didn't do very well on any of it. The words for the test were super easy this time. I think last time it was something like Harley, and some other weird stuff, but this time it was just William, piano, Canada, and Hawaii. Hawaii is super easy for me to write. Canada's fine, so I decided it would only trip me up to write a brief for it. William trips me up sometimes (I'm supposed to put an asterisk in the YAM part), and so does piano, so I made an easy brief for both of those.
I didn't really feel comfortable with my writing at any point. I was super nervous during the 1-minute warm up. I tried to just be relaxed and calm. My mouth gets really tense when I get to tricky parts to write, and it was tensing up right away, so I tried to just relax it. That seemed to help a little. I just got like a deer in the headlights again. My hands wouldn't do what I wanted them to, and the more I tried to force it, the stiffer they got. I managed to keep going, but it wasn't good writing.
I couldn't stop thinking about things, and being upset that I had blown it already and it wasn't working. My fourth minute was great for some reason. I calmed down and wrote everything perfectly. It just kept going on forever, and I psyched myself out, and made some mistakes in the last minute. I didn't pass. Maybe next time. I forgot to use my brief for William, and then remembered, and screwed myself up by deleting "will" and writing my brief. I wrote "C*AN" for Canada instead of "CAN/D*A," so that cost me two points, since "C*AN" comes out as ^can.
It wasn't a hard test. The words were easy, the speed was slow. Easiest test you'll ever fail, for sure. It sucks that I have to wait until November to take it again. Doing it twice a year makes the pressure way worse. I don't know why they only let us have one take. Even if they would do 15 minutes of audio and pick a random 5-minute sample to grade, it would be better.
I got to do the CBC first this time, instead of having to listen to the CRR first. I liked that better, but then it was really boring sitting and waiting for the CRR to finish. I don't like that I have to send a SASE with my flash drive. I think I pay enough for the test that they could send it back to me for free.
Failing the CBC sucks. It's such a huge disappointment, especially when you know there's no reason you shouldn't have passed it. I might try watching the screen next time. I thought it would throw me off, and I would get freaked out when I saw mistakes, but it's really weird not watching it. Maybe if I had the usual distraction of reading as I write, my mind wouldn't be so free to freak out. I'll try it out when I start practicing in October and see how it goes.
I'd kind of like to sit for the state court reporter exam, just so I have some kind of certification. It's two 7-minute QA takes at 200 wpm. You transcribe whichever one you want, and they grade a random 5-minute part of it. It's so totally different from captioning/CART, though, and I don't have any practice material. I hate RTC. The material is so dense. Even at 180 wpm it takes me like 6 times to get 96% on a take. I want some nice, normal stuff to practice. It's also hard to rationalize sitting for, because it's in October, and the CBC is in November. I know I can pass the CBC, so it's hard to take the CR exam when I'm just about to, theoretically, pass the CBC.
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