I decided not to wear my wrist supports anymore. It seemed like they were making my hands hurt more. My hands aren't pain-free, but they're kind of "medium" at this point. I'm pretty comfortable using the ReportIt, but I still have a lot of pain in my arms when I write. I think the ReportIt is the way to go, though. It just makes sense that having your arms supported would be better.
I'm still waiting for the Gen O IE. Upgrading cost about half as much as the machine I just bought in May, so I hope it's better somehow. Originally, they hoped to ship them in November, but they haven't even hardened the mold on the pods yet, so who knows when they'll be out.
There was a discussion on depoman about whether you can start a sentence with a conjuction, like "and" or "but" in order to break up ridiculously long sentences. Someone said that we're taught all of these grammar rules that apply to good writing, but we're not writing - we're taking down what someone has said, and you can't always force that to conform to what would be proper writing style. I would occasionally let a sentence start with "and" or "but," but more often than not I would even go so far as to delete a period I had already stroked and add a comma and the conjunction, leading to some truly long sentences.
So, with ease of readability for the consumer in mind, I took that advice into consideration. Now when the speaker seems to have ended their sentence and the next word is a conjuction, I let the period stand. I think it does help with readability, and it even allows me to break things into paragraphs more often. It's good to have discussions about things. It seems like I work in a vacuum a lot of the time, but I can't improve my style if I don't know what other people are doing.
Showing posts with label Realtime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Realtime. Show all posts
Earnest Captioning
I've started captioning in earnest now. I did 26 hours in May, 20 in the first two weeks of June, and I'm already scheduled for 30 in July. I wind up picking up a lot of shifts as things go along, though. I've worked on every day of the week, but mostly in the evening. I still like to keep morning/afternoon open for CART, since it pays better. I've captioned a variety of things; PBS shows, those shows where they tell you about stuff to do in the area, and even an infomercial. I didn't like that one at all. They talked so fast, and they kept repeating the same thing.
I mostly do news, which I'm not that fond of. It's awesome that they only talk for about 10 minutes, and then take a break, and then they're only back for a couple minutes before you get another break. Even if I caption an hour-long show, they're never on for a very long block of time. I don't enjoy the content, though. I like classes better, although classes can get pretty boring, and it's really painful writing for that long without a break.
I've been sitting down to get ready about half an hour before my show is scheduled to start, to give me time to get the IE adjusted if I need to move anything around, and pull up my briefs for the station, and the info sheet, and the live stream of the broadcast, and get my screen organized with everything where it needs to be. About half the time, I have to call in 10 minutes before the show to make sure the station can see the captions. And I've been trying to do about 10 minutes of prep on the current news.
My prep hasn't been too fruitful, though. About 80% of what I put in doesn't even get used. I recently switched over to just looking at the headlines, and then if they tease a story I'll see if I can find any info on it. I've only done that a few times, but it's worked out okay so far. I'm going to try maybe sitting down 25 minutes ahead of time instead of 30. It really starts to suck up a lot of time in your day once you get enough newscasts going that are only billable for 30 minutes, but you're losing an hour or more of your time to them.
I'm starting to feel more confident about writing the news, though. At first it was pretty scary, but it's not a big deal anymore. I do hit 300 wpm regularly, though, especially during the weather. My average speed for captioning is at 198 wpm, compared to 181 for CART. I think having to write so fast for captioning has helped me write faster on CART. I feel more confident about being able to get everything that's being said, anyway.
Sometimes the shows have scripts. I don't like that at all. It takes like two hours to prep an hour long script. I feel like I'm a transcriptionist. I could just enter some words and write it live, but I know it'll look a lot better if I go from the script. Eclipse is supposed to have a feature that puts a new paragraph after each period, but it doesn't work for me for some reason. I should probably call support and see what they say about that.
I mostly do news, which I'm not that fond of. It's awesome that they only talk for about 10 minutes, and then take a break, and then they're only back for a couple minutes before you get another break. Even if I caption an hour-long show, they're never on for a very long block of time. I don't enjoy the content, though. I like classes better, although classes can get pretty boring, and it's really painful writing for that long without a break.
I've been sitting down to get ready about half an hour before my show is scheduled to start, to give me time to get the IE adjusted if I need to move anything around, and pull up my briefs for the station, and the info sheet, and the live stream of the broadcast, and get my screen organized with everything where it needs to be. About half the time, I have to call in 10 minutes before the show to make sure the station can see the captions. And I've been trying to do about 10 minutes of prep on the current news.
My prep hasn't been too fruitful, though. About 80% of what I put in doesn't even get used. I recently switched over to just looking at the headlines, and then if they tease a story I'll see if I can find any info on it. I've only done that a few times, but it's worked out okay so far. I'm going to try maybe sitting down 25 minutes ahead of time instead of 30. It really starts to suck up a lot of time in your day once you get enough newscasts going that are only billable for 30 minutes, but you're losing an hour or more of your time to them.
I'm starting to feel more confident about writing the news, though. At first it was pretty scary, but it's not a big deal anymore. I do hit 300 wpm regularly, though, especially during the weather. My average speed for captioning is at 198 wpm, compared to 181 for CART. I think having to write so fast for captioning has helped me write faster on CART. I feel more confident about being able to get everything that's being said, anyway.
Sometimes the shows have scripts. I don't like that at all. It takes like two hours to prep an hour long script. I feel like I'm a transcriptionist. I could just enter some words and write it live, but I know it'll look a lot better if I go from the script. Eclipse is supposed to have a feature that puts a new paragraph after each period, but it doesn't work for me for some reason. I should probably call support and see what they say about that.
Scripting Graduations
I'm scheduled to cover three graduations, starting with two tomorrow.
I got scripts for two of them. I've never used a script before. I saw
someone use one once, and they told me a few things. I also watched the
two-hour AccuCap training video, so I at least saw what's possible
there, although nothing really stuck concretely since it wasn't relevant
to me at the time. I spent about five or six hours formatting the first
script. It took me forever just to figure out how to name segments
using script commands.
I also learned that copying and pasting from Word is not a good idea, after I had already edited the entire script. I had to go back through and take out all these weird little places where the tabs in Word didn't show up in the script, but when I pushed them through realtime, they were making this weird arrow. I had to look up how to format songs, because at one graduation they're playing the National Anthem, and at both they're going to sing the Alma Mater.
I had to put tons of professor names in my dictionary, and text global all kinds of stuff to make sure it's going to come out capitalized properly even if I don't have time to do it manually. I put a little note to myself in the spaces where someone is likely to talk and it's not scripted, so I'll have a little bit of a head's up that I need to start writing. My biggest worry right now about the whole deal is that I'm going to accidentally send out one of those notes!
I don't have a script yet for the first graduation, and it's at 1:30 tomorrow. If I have to just write it live, at least I kind of know the process since I've read the scripts for the other two.
I was able to use a cool shortcut I saw on the Eclipse FB group to help me out with scripting. I tested out how I'm going to arrange everything on the actual day, and it was tough fitting all the windows in, so I got rid of the notes display with Ctrl+Shift+F5, which was a huge help.
I also learned that copying and pasting from Word is not a good idea, after I had already edited the entire script. I had to go back through and take out all these weird little places where the tabs in Word didn't show up in the script, but when I pushed them through realtime, they were making this weird arrow. I had to look up how to format songs, because at one graduation they're playing the National Anthem, and at both they're going to sing the Alma Mater.
I had to put tons of professor names in my dictionary, and text global all kinds of stuff to make sure it's going to come out capitalized properly even if I don't have time to do it manually. I put a little note to myself in the spaces where someone is likely to talk and it's not scripted, so I'll have a little bit of a head's up that I need to start writing. My biggest worry right now about the whole deal is that I'm going to accidentally send out one of those notes!
I don't have a script yet for the first graduation, and it's at 1:30 tomorrow. If I have to just write it live, at least I kind of know the process since I've read the scripts for the other two.
I was able to use a cool shortcut I saw on the Eclipse FB group to help me out with scripting. I tested out how I'm going to arrange everything on the actual day, and it was tough fitting all the windows in, so I got rid of the notes display with Ctrl+Shift+F5, which was a huge help.
Learn Your Software
I've learned some pretty cool stuff from the Eclipse FB group. I strongly recommend checking it out if you're on Eclipse. I also watched the full 8 hours of Eclipse basic training tutorials (bo-ring!). It was mostly about title pages and auto indexing and stuff I don't use, or stuff I already know how to do, but I did pick up a couple ideas.
I have a stroke that takes me to the bottom of my realtime feed/has me follow it, and it was always bad when I forgot to hit that after I scrolled up to look at something. But I found out about the "follow always" checkbox in the realtime tab, and now that's not a problem anymore.
I learned that you can make conflicts if you want a certain thing to happen after a number. I use P-KT for % and PER/KRENT for percent, but sometimes it's so much easier to hit P-KT, that I just don't get PER/KRENT in there. I think I've got it set up now that I can write "a large P-KT" or something and it will come up "a large percent," so that's cool. I've been trying to see new opportunities for conflicts overall. Sometimes I miss the F in I've (AO*IV) and get "aye," but why not make it a conflict with the first choice being "aye"? Just today I changed YO*U from ewe to \ewe\you're, because I miss that R so often.
The best idea I got from the FB group was about suffixes. I think someone just said something about their suffix rules table, and it reminded me about how I keep getting things like "organizationtion" when I accidentally drag an extra G into ORGS/S, making it ORGS/GS. So I made a rule that when the word ends in -tion, the suffix should delete the -tion and add an -s, and voila! ORGS/GS is organizations now, and I won't get orientationtion or objectiontion or anything like that, either.
I've come up with tons of applications for that now that I've realized I can do it. No more defectiveive if I already tucked the V and forgot about it (DE/F*EFKT/IV), no more passageage if I got confused and did PAJ/AJ, no more strategicically, or longerer if I didn't realize I tucked the R (LORNG/ER). I don't think -tor was in there as a real suffix; it was in my dictionary, but it wasn't in the suffix table, so it didn't have any suffix rules. I kept getting things like compacttor and reacttor because instead of RE/AK/TOR, I'd write RAEKT/TOR.
But I fixed that rule, so it works for -tor and -tors. And I was getting things like "humorral," so I told it if you're going to add -ral and the word already ends in "r," delete the first "r." I feel like someone who does realtime already has all these suffixes in their suffix table and suffix spelling rules, and I must've missed out on them in an update or something. I should ask on depoman or the FB group for someone's tables, but I'm afraid it might mess things up. I don't see how it could, though, really; it would only change the suffixes in English. It wouldn't have anything to do with my steno outlines. I guess I'd just have to make sure all the things I've changed were still in there.
I also changed my background color from white to gray. Someone on the FB group said it's easier on the eyes. I've heard stuff like that before, but I never really thought about actually changing it until I saw it there. I really do like it better.
I have a ton of different settings files I use for different companies, so it's a pain to change suffix tables or whatever in all of them. I asked about it on FB, and Dave Stanley said that I could just have a global.set that all settings would use for certain things. It seemed like a great idea, except that it overwrites your realtime settings if you let it change your translation settings. It also overwrites your job dictionaries no matter what you do, which is a drag.
I learned how to finally get TM to stop messing with my stroke for "a," which is awesome. I told it to stop pulling "an" and "everyone" into other words, too. I actually turned TM up a bit. The new sliders are kind of confusing, but I understand them now. My main problem was that TM wasn't being aggressive enough; there were tons of words it just left alone. So I unchecked "require an untran," and I bumped it up from whatever it was at (it might've been as low as 1%) to 30%, and I think it's doing better now.
I found out there's a dictionary entry you can use to reject the last AB suggestion and get a new one all at once, and I also found a macro for requesting a brief for the last word, which I think will come in handy.
I have a stroke that takes me to the bottom of my realtime feed/has me follow it, and it was always bad when I forgot to hit that after I scrolled up to look at something. But I found out about the "follow always" checkbox in the realtime tab, and now that's not a problem anymore.
I learned that you can make conflicts if you want a certain thing to happen after a number. I use P-KT for % and PER/KRENT for percent, but sometimes it's so much easier to hit P-KT, that I just don't get PER/KRENT in there. I think I've got it set up now that I can write "a large P-KT" or something and it will come up "a large percent," so that's cool. I've been trying to see new opportunities for conflicts overall. Sometimes I miss the F in I've (AO*IV) and get "aye," but why not make it a conflict with the first choice being "aye"? Just today I changed YO*U from ewe to \ewe\you're, because I miss that R so often.
The best idea I got from the FB group was about suffixes. I think someone just said something about their suffix rules table, and it reminded me about how I keep getting things like "organizationtion" when I accidentally drag an extra G into ORGS/S, making it ORGS/GS. So I made a rule that when the word ends in -tion, the suffix should delete the -tion and add an -s, and voila! ORGS/GS is organizations now, and I won't get orientationtion or objectiontion or anything like that, either.
I've come up with tons of applications for that now that I've realized I can do it. No more defectiveive if I already tucked the V and forgot about it (DE/F*EFKT/IV), no more passageage if I got confused and did PAJ/AJ, no more strategicically, or longerer if I didn't realize I tucked the R (LORNG/ER). I don't think -tor was in there as a real suffix; it was in my dictionary, but it wasn't in the suffix table, so it didn't have any suffix rules. I kept getting things like compacttor and reacttor because instead of RE/AK/TOR, I'd write RAEKT/TOR.
But I fixed that rule, so it works for -tor and -tors. And I was getting things like "humorral," so I told it if you're going to add -ral and the word already ends in "r," delete the first "r." I feel like someone who does realtime already has all these suffixes in their suffix table and suffix spelling rules, and I must've missed out on them in an update or something. I should ask on depoman or the FB group for someone's tables, but I'm afraid it might mess things up. I don't see how it could, though, really; it would only change the suffixes in English. It wouldn't have anything to do with my steno outlines. I guess I'd just have to make sure all the things I've changed were still in there.
I also changed my background color from white to gray. Someone on the FB group said it's easier on the eyes. I've heard stuff like that before, but I never really thought about actually changing it until I saw it there. I really do like it better.
I have a ton of different settings files I use for different companies, so it's a pain to change suffix tables or whatever in all of them. I asked about it on FB, and Dave Stanley said that I could just have a global.set that all settings would use for certain things. It seemed like a great idea, except that it overwrites your realtime settings if you let it change your translation settings. It also overwrites your job dictionaries no matter what you do, which is a drag.
I learned how to finally get TM to stop messing with my stroke for "a," which is awesome. I told it to stop pulling "an" and "everyone" into other words, too. I actually turned TM up a bit. The new sliders are kind of confusing, but I understand them now. My main problem was that TM wasn't being aggressive enough; there were tons of words it just left alone. So I unchecked "require an untran," and I bumped it up from whatever it was at (it might've been as low as 1%) to 30%, and I think it's doing better now.
I found out there's a dictionary entry you can use to reject the last AB suggestion and get a new one all at once, and I also found a macro for requesting a brief for the last word, which I think will come in handy.
10.19.13
I'm still enjoying CART, although sometimes it can be pretty boring, and I look forward to classes where the instructors say more/faster so I don't have any downtime. And sometimes I have to shower after lunch, which kind of bugs me. But I think it's worth it. I wish I had more work. I don't have any classes at all on Fridays. But I'm only working for one company, so I haven't exactly run out of options on that front yet. I'm waiting until after the CBC/CCP exam on 11/1 so I can see how I feel about that before I reach out to more companies.
I love the idea of doing remote CART exclusively, but I don't like the idea of not working during the summer. I'm not sure what else I could do during the summer, though. I guess I could do some captioning, but I'd have to buy AccuCap, which is $3k, and I'd need to have phone lines installed, and get an audio coupler and all of that stuff. I guess it would be worth it to have income during the summer, but I wish there were an easier way to get summer work.
I've been going through my dictionary maintenance list, and I've noticed a disturbing trend of finding things that I wanted to go back and fix - like "-cal" words not working when I stroked K-L - that weren't defined that way just because it was wrong to write them that way. -cal is KA*L, and K-L is -cle, so of course "magical" wasn't defined as MAG/K-L. I should probably reinforce KA*L, not define all the -cal words as K-L and KA*L. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them in there as K-L, too, where it doesn't cause any conflicts.
I think the problem is when I'm doing realtime, I just write the first thing that comes to mind, and it isn't always the right thing, even though it makes sense at the time. I don't like going through and rewriting (in the case of -cal) 580 words the wrong way, though. I'm almost reinforcing the wrong thing. I always write the the right way, too, though, just to make sure it's in there that way as well. Hopefully just by writing all those words at least some way will stick and there won't be any hestitation the next time I write them.
I'm probably supposed to do -ice words as consonant + IS, but I wrote 253 of those as IS just in case. -cept works fine as SEPT, but sometimes I do it as SE*PT, so 27 of those work now. Dis- is just DIS, but some words sound like DIZ, so I fixed about 5 of those to work that way. -ling should be L*ING, but that's hard to write and something I think I just came up with myself, so it's not ingrained at all, and lots of times I wind up stroking LG. I have that defined as -ing for misstrokes, but I fixed it so 532 of those should work as -ling now. And -ious is typically YOUS, but I fixed 670 words so that YUS works, too.
I never seem to make any progress on my dictionary maintenance list. I cross things off, but then I add more things, so it never gets any shorter. I have 19 problems to address right now. I don't always spend a lot of time working on it, though. Starting next week I have to start practicing for the CCP/CBC, so I probably won't do much with it until after the exam.
I'm still having problems where I try to put asterisks on all of my ending word parts whether they need them or not. I wish I had just left my dictionary that way after I changed it to be like that. I guess hindsight is 20/20, though. And maybe there are a lot of endings that I didn't catch and hadn't changed, so I'm not as bad off as I think I am. For now, I'm still just trying to remember which ones need asterisks and which ones don't.
I'm trying to be a little less strict with the realtime rules. I have a lot of trouble trying to remember to write devastate as DEV/STA*IT. DEV is delve, so you can't write DEV/STATE or it would be "delve state." But who's ever going to say "delve state?" Someone sometime maybe, I guess. But "delve stating," is even less likely, so I finally broke down and just defined DEV/STA*IT/G as devastating. I've been trying to think about that kind of thing more often. It goes against all the rules of realtime, so I guess I'll find out sooner or later whether it hurts or helps.
I love the idea of doing remote CART exclusively, but I don't like the idea of not working during the summer. I'm not sure what else I could do during the summer, though. I guess I could do some captioning, but I'd have to buy AccuCap, which is $3k, and I'd need to have phone lines installed, and get an audio coupler and all of that stuff. I guess it would be worth it to have income during the summer, but I wish there were an easier way to get summer work.
I've been going through my dictionary maintenance list, and I've noticed a disturbing trend of finding things that I wanted to go back and fix - like "-cal" words not working when I stroked K-L - that weren't defined that way just because it was wrong to write them that way. -cal is KA*L, and K-L is -cle, so of course "magical" wasn't defined as MAG/K-L. I should probably reinforce KA*L, not define all the -cal words as K-L and KA*L. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them in there as K-L, too, where it doesn't cause any conflicts.
I think the problem is when I'm doing realtime, I just write the first thing that comes to mind, and it isn't always the right thing, even though it makes sense at the time. I don't like going through and rewriting (in the case of -cal) 580 words the wrong way, though. I'm almost reinforcing the wrong thing. I always write the the right way, too, though, just to make sure it's in there that way as well. Hopefully just by writing all those words at least some way will stick and there won't be any hestitation the next time I write them.
I'm probably supposed to do -ice words as consonant + IS, but I wrote 253 of those as IS just in case. -cept works fine as SEPT, but sometimes I do it as SE*PT, so 27 of those work now. Dis- is just DIS, but some words sound like DIZ, so I fixed about 5 of those to work that way. -ling should be L*ING, but that's hard to write and something I think I just came up with myself, so it's not ingrained at all, and lots of times I wind up stroking LG. I have that defined as -ing for misstrokes, but I fixed it so 532 of those should work as -ling now. And -ious is typically YOUS, but I fixed 670 words so that YUS works, too.
I never seem to make any progress on my dictionary maintenance list. I cross things off, but then I add more things, so it never gets any shorter. I have 19 problems to address right now. I don't always spend a lot of time working on it, though. Starting next week I have to start practicing for the CCP/CBC, so I probably won't do much with it until after the exam.
I'm still having problems where I try to put asterisks on all of my ending word parts whether they need them or not. I wish I had just left my dictionary that way after I changed it to be like that. I guess hindsight is 20/20, though. And maybe there are a lot of endings that I didn't catch and hadn't changed, so I'm not as bad off as I think I am. For now, I'm still just trying to remember which ones need asterisks and which ones don't.
I'm trying to be a little less strict with the realtime rules. I have a lot of trouble trying to remember to write devastate as DEV/STA*IT. DEV is delve, so you can't write DEV/STATE or it would be "delve state." But who's ever going to say "delve state?" Someone sometime maybe, I guess. But "delve stating," is even less likely, so I finally broke down and just defined DEV/STA*IT/G as devastating. I've been trying to think about that kind of thing more often. It goes against all the rules of realtime, so I guess I'll find out sooner or later whether it hurts or helps.
180
I really like doing CART. It's great not having to work weird hours like I would have to for captioning. And lots of times I wind up not having to actually do anything and I still get paid, which would never happen with captioning. Something's always going to be on the air, whether it's what you did prep for or not. The only bad part is that the audio isn't always that great. But I can only work with what I've got, and so far I don't think I've missed writing anything vital because of it.
I'm always more surprised by what's in my dictionary properly than by what isn't. "Hieroglyphics" came out perfectly the other day, and I already had "Micah" in there. Who knew? I have a bunch of math symbols in, like +, -, etc., and I've even got superscript set up. Auto Brief comes in handy a lot. In one of my classes, the instructor kept saying "prepositional phrase," which I write as PREP/SIGS/NAL/FRAIS, or PREP/SILGS/FRAIS if I'm feeling really confident. Auto Brief suggested "PRO*EP," which was a whole lot easier, and I wound up using that brief 30 times just for that one session.
My arm being messed up has really slowed down my progress on the Phoenix speed drills. It's just impossible to try to build speed with any kind of accuracy at this point. But I keep plugging along anyway, and sometimes I have good days with it. I finally hit a major milestone: I've got a speed of 180 wpm or better on every drill, and my average speed is 185 wpm now. Maybe that means I can finally pass the CBC/CCP this time. I'm not going to a concert the night before specifically so I won't have any regrets about it after the test, so it had better be worth it.
I've been getting some good dictionary maintenance in. I spent a couple hours on it one day, and added 956 entries. Per is P*ER because PER is per-, so I made sure all 253 -per entries were defined with P*R. I decided VAL should be Val, so I defined 84 -val entries as VA*L. I do -in and -en both as -N, so I made sure 993 -in entries and 1524 -en will work. And I guess there was something wrong with -eous words, because they were on the list, so I wrote all 126 of those.
I'm always more surprised by what's in my dictionary properly than by what isn't. "Hieroglyphics" came out perfectly the other day, and I already had "Micah" in there. Who knew? I have a bunch of math symbols in, like +, -, etc., and I've even got superscript set up. Auto Brief comes in handy a lot. In one of my classes, the instructor kept saying "prepositional phrase," which I write as PREP/SIGS/NAL/FRAIS, or PREP/SILGS/FRAIS if I'm feeling really confident. Auto Brief suggested "PRO*EP," which was a whole lot easier, and I wound up using that brief 30 times just for that one session.
My arm being messed up has really slowed down my progress on the Phoenix speed drills. It's just impossible to try to build speed with any kind of accuracy at this point. But I keep plugging along anyway, and sometimes I have good days with it. I finally hit a major milestone: I've got a speed of 180 wpm or better on every drill, and my average speed is 185 wpm now. Maybe that means I can finally pass the CBC/CCP this time. I'm not going to a concert the night before specifically so I won't have any regrets about it after the test, so it had better be worth it.
I've been getting some good dictionary maintenance in. I spent a couple hours on it one day, and added 956 entries. Per is P*ER because PER is per-, so I made sure all 253 -per entries were defined with P*R. I decided VAL should be Val, so I defined 84 -val entries as VA*L. I do -in and -en both as -N, so I made sure 993 -in entries and 1524 -en will work. And I guess there was something wrong with -eous words, because they were on the list, so I wrote all 126 of those.
7.28.13
I struck out at the EMG test, which I guess was a good thing. The neurologist doesn't think it's carpal tunnel or a pinched nerve. He said he'd "think about it" and I should wear the wrist brace at night for three weeks and then come back and see if he came up with any new ideas. I don't think I'm going to pay to make that happen. I scheduled a PT appointment for this week, so we'll see how that goes. The neurologist also wrote me a prescription to try Topamax, but I haven't gotten it filled yet.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
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.
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.
Headway
I'm finally starting to feel good about my realtime. Out of the last three news broadcasts I've practiced, my lowest accuracy was 98.83%. I'm starting to not get freaked out when I make a mistake, and be aware of what's being said while I fix mistakes. I still haven't gotten any work from the company I signed a contract with, though. I'd really like to get my feet wet and see where I stand on some actual CART work.
I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.
I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.
In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.
I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.
I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!
I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.
I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.
In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.
I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.
I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!
3.16.13
I started using the plastic case my LS came in as a lapdesk for the LS when I write, which is awesome. It's great not having to take anything extra to balance it on. I still haven't quite gotten my sitting position down perfectly. I feel like I have to write at speed for about 10 minutes before I can get into the groove, no matter how much other practice I do beforehand.
I've got a new system for my "reinforcement" practice. 50 words, and about 20-30 sentences. I was working on writing fractions properly - "two-thirds" in general, 2.5 million, 2 1/2 bars, etc. I'd been always doing "2.5" because I got a little mixed up when I read the style guidelines once, so that was totally natural. It didn't take too long to get used to "two-thirds"-style, and then I started working on things like 2 1/2. Now that's my default, and I have to focus really hard on using the other two when it's appropriate. My system for writing the latter is to just do 2/*1/*2, which seems to be working so far.
I've still got some sentences I'm practicing with that. I'll be practicing "an" sentences forever. I am slowly starting to remember to write A*N during realtime practice, though. Right now I'm also working on "-nent" sentences; pertinent, imminent, etc. I have a tendency to write the ending as -NT, which is my "n't." I could (and do) define the words that way, but I feel like it's better to write them properly, which would be NENT.
I ran into a major roadblock in my project of re-defining groups of words. I had a few that just related to the way I started writing ending word parts a long time ago, to help with writing names on the fly. It's not really intended for use in words that aren't proper nouns, but now that I've learned to use it with proper nouns, I tend to use it with everything. So I went back and fixed 360 instances of consonant +-ie (+ AO*IP), 515 of + ey (+ AO*EP), and 392 of -ee (AO*EP).
Then I ran into "-ive." I had 1544 "-ive" entries in my dictionary. The problem is, at best, I've got three ways to write those words. Take "combatative." I could write it COM/BAT/TIVE, COM/BAT/IVE, or COM/BA*FT. None of those are incorrect. For every word that's in there, I wind up writing it 3-6 different ways, and it's only actually in my dictionary one or two of those ways. Terrible. So I've been working on those for a while, and the other issues I've identified are piling up like mad. But I think I'm getting close to the end on those, finally.
I'm starting to regularly hit 250 wpm when I do realtime practice, which is awesome. I'm getting a pretty good feel for when/how to fix something, and when to let it go. Just not freaking out/freezing up when I make a mistake is a huge factor, and something I'm working on. I think my two biggest hurdles are still fingerspelling names, and not getting tripped up. I still have instances where I focus so much on one thing that's not working, that I lose what they're saying for about a sentence.
I've got a new system for my "reinforcement" practice. 50 words, and about 20-30 sentences. I was working on writing fractions properly - "two-thirds" in general, 2.5 million, 2 1/2 bars, etc. I'd been always doing "2.5" because I got a little mixed up when I read the style guidelines once, so that was totally natural. It didn't take too long to get used to "two-thirds"-style, and then I started working on things like 2 1/2. Now that's my default, and I have to focus really hard on using the other two when it's appropriate. My system for writing the latter is to just do 2/*1/*2, which seems to be working so far.
I've still got some sentences I'm practicing with that. I'll be practicing "an" sentences forever. I am slowly starting to remember to write A*N during realtime practice, though. Right now I'm also working on "-nent" sentences; pertinent, imminent, etc. I have a tendency to write the ending as -NT, which is my "n't." I could (and do) define the words that way, but I feel like it's better to write them properly, which would be NENT.
I ran into a major roadblock in my project of re-defining groups of words. I had a few that just related to the way I started writing ending word parts a long time ago, to help with writing names on the fly. It's not really intended for use in words that aren't proper nouns, but now that I've learned to use it with proper nouns, I tend to use it with everything. So I went back and fixed 360 instances of consonant +-ie (+ AO*IP), 515 of + ey (+ AO*EP), and 392 of -ee (AO*EP).
Then I ran into "-ive." I had 1544 "-ive" entries in my dictionary. The problem is, at best, I've got three ways to write those words. Take "combatative." I could write it COM/BAT/TIVE, COM/BAT/IVE, or COM/BA*FT. None of those are incorrect. For every word that's in there, I wind up writing it 3-6 different ways, and it's only actually in my dictionary one or two of those ways. Terrible. So I've been working on those for a while, and the other issues I've identified are piling up like mad. But I think I'm getting close to the end on those, finally.
I'm starting to regularly hit 250 wpm when I do realtime practice, which is awesome. I'm getting a pretty good feel for when/how to fix something, and when to let it go. Just not freaking out/freezing up when I make a mistake is a huge factor, and something I'm working on. I think my two biggest hurdles are still fingerspelling names, and not getting tripped up. I still have instances where I focus so much on one thing that's not working, that I lose what they're saying for about a sentence.
On Realtime
Writing realtime is so totally
different from what you learn in school. I've always known I wanted to
go into captioning, so I was always doing everything I could to "write
realtime." But it wasn't until I shadowed a class and imagined someone
reading my product that I really understood what it was all about. If
you're not watching the screen, you're not doing realtime. And I didn't
train for that at all. I always stared at a point on the wall. It's
great for focus, but it's no way to realtime.
Transitioning from that has been really difficult. It's a whole new layer. Not just the mechanics of dividing your attention, which I've talked about before, but developing the instinctual knowledge of when to paraphrase, when to drop things that aren't vital, when to correct a mistake and when to just let it stand.
I've been focusing on getting names down, even if it means dropping a little of what comes after the name. If the anchor says, "And now here's Bryan Edwards reporting in on the carnage from Syria," it's better to write "Bryan Edwards from Syria" than "And now the carnage from Syria." It's a tough switch. The whole realtime thing is all about figuring out what the most important thing is to get through. I can't believe I never realized that until I shadowed that class, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.
Transitioning from that has been really difficult. It's a whole new layer. Not just the mechanics of dividing your attention, which I've talked about before, but developing the instinctual knowledge of when to paraphrase, when to drop things that aren't vital, when to correct a mistake and when to just let it stand.
I've been focusing on getting names down, even if it means dropping a little of what comes after the name. If the anchor says, "And now here's Bryan Edwards reporting in on the carnage from Syria," it's better to write "Bryan Edwards from Syria" than "And now the carnage from Syria." It's a tough switch. The whole realtime thing is all about figuring out what the most important thing is to get through. I can't believe I never realized that until I shadowed that class, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.
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