Okay. I know the title seems negative. You may be thinking, is she going to launch into a diatribe about how court reporting is a dying profession? Or how it's a waste of money to go to school because digital software is taking over reporters' jobs? The answer to both is no.
I'm writing this to save anyone who is like me from accruing debt by paying a sub-par school to teach them what they could easily teach themselves. I know there will be many people who will argue that there are perfectly good reporting schools and they are happy having gone or going to those schools. I say, good for them.
This will be a hypocritical post because I am going to a court reporting school, right now. I will still be attending this school for another quarter after this current one is completed. Why? Why, when I am writing others not to? Well, because I have to register for classes today and I don't have all my ducks in a row to drop out and continue learning on my own as of today. However, I'm most likely going to drop out after this quarter, so I will be self-studying after October.
In other posts I have stressed the point that research, research, research is your best friend when it comes to educating yourself, especially in the realm of stenography.
The lack of following my own learned advice when I began this journey is exactly what got me where I am today, feeling very disappointed with my school's ability to teach what is needed to become a competitive professional stenographer, and loaded with debt.
First, you must understand where I was at when I decided to become a stenographer. If you've read the first posts on here, you have an idea. For those who don't want to go back and read old stuff, I'll sum it up here: I was pregnant with my 2nd daughter, my first being 18 months old. My husband was not working too much because of a fall-through on a few jobs and I was working my glamourous job at the mall. We needed real, grown-up jobs. We had a lot of fun since our meeting at 19, falling in love, hanging with friends, him building guitars and me writing here and there. However, the ideal artist life was ill-suited to having kids. Reality set in. I was the one most likely to thrive in a "real" job. I'm the one who has an outstanding work ethic, motivation, and drive to take on a grown-up job. Not that my husband is really lacking in those areas, he just prefers to build guitars and work for himself. He is ill-suited to a structured, corporate, game-playing environment. He is anti-authority in some senses, never having let go of our punk rock roots.
For those of you who are married, successfully, you'll understand that often it is best to realize the areas where you are weak and strong, where your spouse is weak and strong, and then see how you can make those things complement one another in order to make the most of what you've got. Decision: I would go to school. I always wanted to go back anyway. I had to give up the pursuit of a literary career, in the sense of being a writer or English professor, as it wouldn't really make the money required. I did some internet research, having been interested in court reporting when I was younger, and found the salary potential to be very promising.
It was sort of off-the-cuff that I decided to go to court reporting school. And I wish that I had done a lot more research before signing up for the debt I did.
At that point in my life, I really needed something I committed to and was obligated to show up for in order to motivate me. So, in a way, signing up for school was probably one of the best things that happened to me. Why, then would I discourage others from doing so? Well, with experience comes knowledge.
I went into theory class with that new student awe. I was excited and passionate about what I was doing. And, bonus, I was good at it. Theory, for those of you who don't know, is where you learn the language of steno. Your Theory is the steno language you write in that is programmed into your software to translate into English, or any other language you've got set up. It is also a bit like learning an instrument, some have compared it to piano. Anyway, learning languages and instruments have always been my forte, so I was perhaps over-confident in my abilities in theory class. It is also nice to have software and a new machine, all deferred on a student loan when you're first in school. I met people, cool people that I liked and we had community. We had captioners, reporters, CART providers all come and speak about how great their careers are. It was a very motivational environment.
Then came speed class. Let me just say, if you are thinking of embarking on or are already embarking on your own journey to become a stenographer: Get a good practice routine in from the very beginning. I had to learn that the hard way in my 80wpm class after theory.
I continued on ground (on campus) for quite a while. Life happened and I found myself without child care for our daughters. I then had to make the switch to online. I had been taking my academics online and going to campus for speed building. There are many frustrations that came up from online classes. The worst was feeling like no one gave a rat's arse about me anymore. Those "cool" people I met, well, just some of them, and the school itself.
This is where I began to become enlightened about what a sham reporting school can be. If your experience is different, that's great for you. I am only speaking from my own experience.
I have been practicing to stale dictation at the minimum of 6 hours per week for many quarters in a row. This 6 hours is done on PeV (Perfomance Evaluator) in a pattern form. So you begin a 1.5 minute take at -10 wpm under your goal speed, write it, evaluate it, drill any mistakes and then you move through a pattern where the speed increases 5 wpm on each block. You end up writing all the way up to +10 wpm from your goal speed and then back down to goal speed for another evaluation. While this is a good system for knowing where you are at, it gets really old, really fast. The majority of my practice required is on PeV each week.
Combine PeV with hard copy practice, extra dictation practice, deposition or mock trial practice, drilling problem words, working on briefs, reviewing your theory, and testing, that's a lot of practice. Now, you have to complete work for any academics you might be taking and take time to learn your software as well.
You only have so much time in a day. Especially, if you are like me and have kids, husband, house, another job or two other jobs. You're busy. You want to make your life better and become a stenographer. You want to do something rewarding, something you can be really good at, something that you can be passionate about. BUT, you only have so much time and school wants all your work in by Sunday night.
You have the stress of completing work for an academic, getting your speed tests taken and hopefully passed, replying to the discussion board where no one gives a shite to really put an effort into responding to the topic because it's just for attendance and they're all just as busy as you. You blow through the medical and legal classes not really retaining anything because your school is pushing you to get out of the speed you're in our you'll run out of money, run out of time and not get that Associates Degree, run, run, run. It's a huge race and the students are atrophying in areas that are important and being pushed to the limit in speed while the other, essential parts of their development are being left by the wayside.
My school pushes the students to get out of speed without care about their accuracy. Accuracy will come with speed as you get more proficient in that speed. This is true to some degree. However, when you can write a 5 minute take at 180 wpm and it looks like complete slop, I mean steno everywhere, but you can read it enough to figure out what you mean and can transcribe the test to a 98% accuracy level, you pass! This is good enough for school, but not good enough for the working environment. How does this teach you to write for 4 hours at varying speeds from 160 to 300 wpm?
Real time needs to be the focus. If you want the jobs that are really profitable, rewarding, and challenging, you need excellent real time. This system of sort of faking it until you make it doesn't work in stenography. Not for me. Why should I be passed to the next speed just because I can read my own crappy steno? Yes, it is good to learn your miss-strokes and improve on that and to be able to edit your mistakes, but is it really making us better writers? I don't feel like it is.
I am constantly feeling as though in order for me to gain a complete education about stenography and how to be an excellent stenographer, I have to supplement my education at my school with hours and hours of my own research, practice, and knowledge seeking.
Why then should I pay for and be obligated to the additional, feeble work that is required from the school? Why not take advantage of the vast amount of information that is available on the internet for free or only fractions of the cost? Sure, it might take longer without the motivation of that Sunday night deadline, but I feel like it would be a better, more thorough education.
The internet is a vast and beautiful thing, if you know how to use it to your advantage. If you take what applies to you or can be of use to you and disregard all the rest, you're golden on your quest for information, whatever shape that may take. There are so many resources on the internet that can help you on your journey to become a stenographer. And with those internet connections made online, you can even make real connections with real people who are willing to help, guide, or encourage you in a process they themselves are familiar with.
YouTube is a great source for dictation material. You can even find depositions, trials, random literary, Q&A, etc. There are plenty of news, sports, entertainment, everything you can write to. Facebook is also a good resource to find out where to begin. Just put in court reporting in the search bar and you will be flooded with a plethora of groups and pages on the subject. There are other students and professionals that can help you answer questions about what you'll really need to know in order to do the job. BUT, remember, to use that little search magnifying glass in groups and pages before posting your questions. Often times, whatever you're going to ask has already been covered and you can save a lot of time by just reading through those threads. There is also a mass of other blogs, forums, and chat boards related to steno so you can really pick and choose what suits you and your ambitions the best. All the information you require is mostly free and just a Google page away.
As far as equipment, you can find a used machine for very reasonable most places that you would buy anything used. eBay, Craigslist, internet reporting groups that are specifically for selling things, even the thrift store if you're really lucky. I purchased an old working paper writer for 25 dollars at the Good Will, no joke. If I didn't already have my Wave from school, I wouldn't hesitate to use it to practice. All of the books, audio CDs, everything you could want can be found via the internet and at a fraction of the price of what a school costs.
Don't go to school. Don't get into unnecessary debt. Don't waste time learning something that may not be applicable or beneficial to what you are trying to achieve. Don't be pushed into buying a certain machine or software because the company that makes them owns your school. Don't fly through important parts of your education just to meet a deadline. Don't give up good real time just to pass a 5 minute take. Don't answer for the 50th time on a discussion board the question: What are your goals for this quarter and how will you achieve them?
If you want to be a court reporter, CART provider, captioner, ect. Do the following:
- Research, research, research
- Find out exactly what you will need to do the job well
- Consult with other working professionals and students
- Find the materials and information you need at the lowest price, or free, via the interwebs
- Practice, practice, practice
- Make your dictionary work for you, this is your life, your career, your name out there one day
- Learn your software inside and out.
- Practice, practice, practice
- Make sure your practice is varied. You need to be able to write almost anything and have it come out real time perfect as much as possible. This will be an ongoing process even when you're working, but get started now.
- Be passionate
- Do what works for you and what is best for your life situation, don't just take anyone's experience as fact for yourself.
Especially, mine. If school works for you, fine. It's not really working for me. It's stagnated my passion, pushed me in areas that are not beneficial to my career and failed me in areas where I really needed a well-rounded education. I'm now left to educate myself on a vast amount of what I will need to be a stenographer.
Why, then, should I continue to pay for school?
Bonus: Here are some links I have found thus far that might help anyone interested in finding out how to go about educating themselves on stenography:
On The Cheap and Sleazy Side
CSR Nation
Depoman
StenoLife
Plover
I'll probably be posting a lot more on self-study as I begin my search for myself as well as anyone who might be interested. And please, leave in the comments any suggestions you might have for me to help me be successful at self-study.
-L.A.
