I had to practice to the news a bit to do the testing for the captioning company, and I realized that they talk really fast on the news. It's terrible. I just feel like I'm getting hammered. It's at least an average of 200 wpm. Some of my classes are like that, and I hate those ones. It's probably just because it hurts a lot to write that fast, though.
But it made me realize how much I like CART. Sometimes it's boring, but lots of times I get to hear about really interesting stuff. I've been more grateful now that I get to do CART. It's especially nice when people talk slowly and I can get almost every word out perfectly, at like 99.9% accuracy.
I've been trying to bring more of a captioning philosophy into my CART. Flow is especially important in captioning. Words are scrolling by super fast. I've been given this advice before, but I didn't take it to heart as much as I should have - the idea that if you make a mistake and you can't correct it right away, don't correct it at all, or it will be really confusing. You don't want to have a wrong word, and then 15 words later put the correct word. It won't make sense anymore.
It's also difficult for the consumer if you keep backspacing, like erasing a bunch of words and then writing them again. Plus, for me, it trips me up and slows me down to do that, anyway. So I've been focusing more on just letting mistakes go and not trying to fix them, especially if they're ones where the intended word can easily be inferred. It's really hard, though. Whenver I see a mistake, I want to pounce on it and fix it. But it's important not to do that if it's going to mean I miss some stuff that comes after it.
I'm trying to be more conscious about what I'm writing. My instinct is to write as fast as I can and as much as I can, but that stresses me out and causes me to make more mistakes. I do much better, and actually get more of the content, if I just relax and allow myself room to paraphrase if I need to.
The owner of the captioning company said that "newbie" captioners tend to start out getting around 2000 words per half-hour broadcast. My tests were between 2800-3000, and she said 3000 was what a veteran captioner would get. So I'm not leaving out too much. I'm surprised I'm even getting that much. I checked on some transcripts from when I practiced to the news about a year ago, and they were around 2200. I guess I am getting better, whether it seems like it to me or not.
It's hard for me to believe I really am a professional. I've been working at it for so long, and it seemed like I wasn't making any progress and I wouldn't ever get here. I wasn't fully confident in myself when I got my first job. But now I've passed the CBC and CCP, and passed tests to get hired at numerous companies. All I see is the mistakes I constantly make every day, and it makes it seem like I'm not good at this. But I get great feedback from the consumers. My skills must be solid.
I'm finally earning enough to make a living doing this, and I really do do it well. I just wish it didn't hurt so much! I feel like I could take on a lot more work if I weren't limited by the pain. It seems like I can work about 4 hours a day without being in complete agony, so that's where I try to draw the line. I get jealous hearing about people who can work for 8 hours a day without pain, though.
It's scary thinking about when I do start captioning. I blocked off anything before 5p CT for CART, so I'm only available to caption during nights and weekends. I'm covering a class right now that meets 4 times in 8 weeks at 6p my time, and it seems like my arm hurts way worse at 6p than it does in the morning, regardless of how much writing I've already done that day. I'm dreading having to write an average of 200 wpm at night.
I have to have some kind of income during the summer, though. I might be able to piece together 20 hours of CART a week during the school year (it hasn't happened yet, but hopefully I'll land more permanent classes next semester than I did this semester), but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting much during the summer. And you can't just work for a company during the summer; you have to be available year-round if you want summer hours.
It all takes so much time to put together! I feel like I'm on the right track at least, though.
The worst is having to CART 3-hour classes. For some reason that seems to be a lot of what I get. My arm just doesn't hold up for 3 hours. I can go for about 45 minutes before I start really running into trouble. On the one hand, I wish I could just not offer to take those classes, but on the other, I don't think I would get much work if I didn't do them. There's usually a 10-minute break in the middle, but that doesn't help much.
I have 3 hours of CART scheduled for Sunday morning. That will be my first time working on the weekend, so it should be interesting. I had this Tuesday off, so I guess that was my Sunday. It just occurred to me that I get paid 15% extra for working on the weekend. That's the policy that the main company I do work for has. I love that company! They're the best. I want to try to do as much work as I can for them, but the problem will be if other companies offer me full-semester classes before that one puts out their schedule.
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