Advice for Prospective Court Reporting Students

1) Select your language carefully. If you are fluent in a language other than English, that may be a more valuable and lucrative endeavor. There are very few court reporters who can steno in French or Spanish, for example. If I had only known that back then!

2) Shop around for theories. Don't settle on a theory simply because it is taught at your local school. . There is a difference between stroke-intensive theories (Like Phoenix and StenEd) and brief-intensive theories (like Magnum, for example). I'm inclined to favor the latter though my school advocates for Phoenix. I wish I had known back when I started school what I know now. It's discouraging to have to do damage control after two years of schooling.

3) Shop around for steno machines and software. Again, don't settle on what your school tells you to buy. Schools are approached by steno companies to sell their products. Schools are most likely receiving commission for the machines they sell and don't necessarily have your best interest in mind. Consider something unusual like the Lightspeed as it is more light, portable, and cheaper than traditional machines. It will be difficult for you to adapt to it later if you go with a traditional machine first. Also, they offer their student software, DigitalCAT, for free. Save your lunch money!

4) Check in with your pocketbook. Will you be taking time off work or working full/part time while in school? Do you have children, or are you expecting to have them soon? How much time will you have available to dedicate to practice every day? Steno is not something you can pick up occasionally and expect to improve. You must have time to practice every day. This is not a joke, folks. Don't waste a decade of your life in court reporting school. Look to the future. Consider how long it will take to graduate and how much effort is required to graduate on time. Most students do not achieve the minimum speed of 225 words per minute within two years of full-time schooling. Think about the possibility of having to take (and pay for) continuing education. Make a commitment to practice as hard as it takes to graduate on time.

5) Consider teaching yourself. You can buy books and teach yourself and save a ton of money. Tuitions run very high across the board, and there is an epidemic of mediocre court reporting schools out there. If you can speak to students who have graduated and failed in a particular school, you can get a better idea whether or not the school does everything it can to help their students succeed. Consider purchasing Magnum Steno: Beginning Theory and teaching yourself at home. You'll most likely be teaching yourself in school anyways since most schools have self-guided programs. Heck, most CR schools don't have qualified instructors at all. In my experience, a tape recorder loaded with pre-recorded dictations would do just as well as a flesh-and-blood instructor. Join court reporting Facebook groups to ask questions, and buy an excellent English grammar book to perfect your grammar skills. Good ones include Morson's Guide or Margie Well's punctuation textbook.

More to come!

Yours,

The Steno Duchess

Summer "break" is a trap.

Dear fellow stenographers, Phoenix Theorists, and Phoenix Deniers,

For those of you who are in school as I am, you may be currently enjoying a whole month off. This phenomenon may commonly be referred to as the "Summer Break", "August Break", or "Summer Vacation". I'm here to warn you that these are really just euphemisms for something much darker.

Much like a musical instrument, steno is not something you can neglect, especially during your school years. If you miss a day of practice, YOU ARE SAILING INTO DISASTER. Daily practice is essential to developing muscle memory, fast reflexes, and maintaining those precious neural pathways that you have carved out of previous practice.

It is so discouraging to sit down at your machine after a day or two of not practicing and realizing how rusty you are. What's worse is that you will have to redouble your efforts in order to build back up to the speed you had previously achieved and have now lost. That can be very stressful, especially if you have tests coming up, since you cannot know how long it will take to get back on track. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll get discouraged and drop out. What are you going to do about it?

There is no such thing as taking a break from steno if you want to be the best you can be. But you will see that writing at your machine is so much more enjoyable when you are doing well than when you are struggling. For this reason, see practice as an omnipresent thing in your life. Get a Briefcatcher, and bring it with you everywhere you go. I practice on the subway, on planes, at the cottage, and anywhere else I happen to be. Record your own drills or write down your hesitation briefs and keep them with your Briefcatcher so that you have something to practice. If you're going to indulge in watching TV or a movie, you better write to it! Don't waste the opportunity of working on your endurance! When else are you going to get two full hours of practice? You'll feel so much better the next day not having to make up for wasted time.

So why let your blood, sweat, and tears go to waste? Get your daily practice, and feel how much faster and accurate you become at every session.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

The Steno Duchess

This is what happens when you don't back up your dictionary.

Dear fellow stenographers and Phoenix Theorists,

It has been several weeks -- nay, months -- since I have last redacted a blog post. This was not out of sheer laziness, as I assure you I enjoy sharing my thoughts with you. But rather, I have been deeply immersed in the gargantuan-yet-exciting task of shortening my writing. In the last month or two, I have made almost 400 entries in my CaseCAT update area. Is this not fantastic? I say yes.

Well, at least it WAS 400 entries until they all magically vanished today.

My heart sunk, and despite the trauma, I could not help but smile, for I had recently learned how to back up my dictionaries and had done nothing about it. It is the natural order of things that one should lose all one's data after having learned how to protect it and to have not done so. So yes, everything did seem normal and natural to me.

I have learned that you should not leave anything until later. Simple statement -- tricky to apply. I was already tackling issues with my writing and taking charge of my difficulties, yet I managed to let this one slip past me by assuring myself I would deal with it later "when it was worth it". When exactly was I expecting it to become "worth it"? Why, it was worth it from the beginning when I decided to start drastically shortening my writing.

What we all need to retain from my blunder is to always remember that what you are doing is valuable. There is potential in every moment of practice to become a better reporter. If one doesn't seize that moment, one loses that potential to be the best they can be.

I want  you to make some firm decisions today: I will be focused. I will face my fears. I will venture out of my comfort zone. I will not let others distract me from my valuable practice time. I will not put things off. I WILL BACK UP MY DICTIONARY EVERY DAY.

In stenodarity,

The Steno Duchess

Follow me on Twitter

Dear colleagues,

Did you know that you can now follow me on Twitter? I post my blog entries on there, as well as little steno-related tidbits that can help you in your quest to be the best stenographer you can be. Please follow me @StenoDuchess. I would also love to hear from you and how you are doing. You can email me at: stenoduchess@gmail.com. I also have a Youtube Channel that is still in construction. I hope to eventually make regular videos to help us all overcome our steno woes. I hope to hear from you soon!

Love,

The Steno Duchess

14 briefs for phrases that end in "did"

Dear stenographers and Phoenix Theorists,

In my practice today, I stumbled upon a concept that shocked me. Okay, well, I might be exaggerating a little, but I did widen my eyes and drop my jaw. My heartbeat became noticeably faster. "What an outrage, I thought to myself. This isn't even in the Phoenix Theory Quick Reference Guide!" So today, I want to share with you, beloved colleagues, 14 phrase briefs for phrases that end with "did":

I did /KRW*F
he did /HAOE*F
she did /SHAOE*F
you did /KWROU*F
how did /HO*UF
that did /THA*F
these did /THAOE*F
they did /THAEU*F
this did /THEU*F
we did /WAOE*F
when did /WH*F
where did /WR*F
who did /WHAO*F

These are only the ones that should already exist in your personal dictionary. You might want to create more by defining them. If you do, be sure to share them generously with us in the comment section.

I wonder how many other concepts there are in Phoenix that are not advertised in the official reference guide...

I hope you found this useful. Please let me know how you are doing.

With love,

The Steno Duchess

Who wants to graduate on time?

Dear fellow stenographers and Phoenix Theorists,

I hope you are having a wonderful day, and I thank you for joining me here for another Steno Duchess blog post. I hope you are making good progress in your steno practice, and that you are finding ways to complement your formal schooling to enable you to succeed and improve faster. If you are, I would love for you to share your strategies with me, so that I can share them with the world. Please feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this post, or send me an email. You can alo follow me on Twitter @StenoDuchess.

I was chatting with a layman about the difference between steno theories, and he brought up some very interesting points. He reminded me that when I was in university, there was no talk about stagnation. It was either you learn the material, and you use it to be successful in school, or you don't, and you fail the class. There was no option to take your time or to do what was best for you. No: everyone had to progress; everyone had to study and learn and finish on time. Now, in the steno world, there is a lot of talk about how different people progress at different speeds, and you should do what "works for you". We are told not to panic if we are not keeping up; that that is normal. In fact, it is deemed abnormal if someone progresses quickly, and actually manages to graduate on time. I'm going to come out and be 100% honest with you right now: that seems really bizarre to me. The fact that we are not pushed to keep up, or given strategies to accelerate our learning process is strange. It is entirely left to the student to manage their own time and pathe their own way to graduation. Isn't that odd? If the student was studying on their own at home, then that would be another story, but we ARE frequenting formal instutions, are we not? So why isn't there a formal procedure and path laid out for us? I get that not everyone learns in the same way, but that's how it worked in university. I get that not everyone has the same natural dexterity or talent to progress at the same rate, but that's how it worked in university: Everyone had to finish on time. even with programs that are based on personal talent and dexterity such as music: You have to finish on time. I studied music, and there never was any talk of perhaps not graduating on time. If you were lagging behind, the professor more often than not stepped in to see what was going on and gave you the tools you needed to make it.

I want to see that happen in steno school. I want teachers to take us by the hand, and with their knowledge and experience, help us be the best we can be, and more importantly, graduate on time.

Until next time,

The Steno Duchess

Searching for steno truth!

Dear fellow stenographers and Pheonix Theorists,

Class today was, to say the least, exasperating. Words cannot express how frustrated I am with PT and with school. I squirm constantly in my seat as we do endless, mindless dictations in class, with very little actual instruction. I work hard and see no progress. Mark Kislingbury says that a lack in progress means that there is something wrong with one's practice, and I completely agree. There is something wrong with my practice--with our practice. We are taught how to practice in school, and are being misled, indeed. Most students, if not all, are getting stuck in their 100s or less and are not seeing any progress. This is not for lack of trying, but simply because there is something wrong with our practice. But I am frustrated because, as a student, I expect to have some real guidance and instruction to be able to see some progress in my writing, but instead I am getting fake guidance and fake instruction, which accounts for my lack of progress.

What I want to say to you today--yes you!--is that if you expect to make steno your career, and you are not progressing consistently in school, you MUST do some research and come up with a strategy to guide yourself. Your instructor is more than likely not helping you get faster. Are they trying to keep us in school longer? I am inclined to think that this may be the case. In fact, this sounds like a total conspiracy to me. Most of us are being told that briefs are a deterrent to writing faster. That is a shameful lie! Consequently, we are not getting any guidance in the brief department, leaving us alone before the massive task of defining thousands of briefs for ourselves with no rhyme or reason. Here's an example: The other day, we did a dictation that was clearly constructed for practicing phrase briefs. Phrases like "before the accident", "after the accident", "state you name", "my name is", "how about", and lots more, were plugged in there for practice. I'm talking dozens of them. I was shocked that our instructor didn't look over these briefs with us, and didn't even mention their existence. As a matter of fact, we weren't even told that this was going to be a dictation for briefs, nor did we take a few minutes to look at how to write them. As we were writing, I realized by myself that all these briefs existed, and had to look as many of them up as possible and write them down on my "to review" list. Gee, thanks for nothing, Instructor.

I am so frustrated with this that I feel like I should no longer be paying tuition to the school and just teach myself from now on. I have not yet found the courage to drop out, but I have taken steps to ensure I am not completely wasting my time in school. What are YOU doing for yourself? Are you wasting away in steno school, stagnating at 60, 70, 80 or more words per minute? Are you coming to class, writing those endless, mindless dictations, and getting no feedback from your instructor and just letting it be? Are you rotting in your chair, checking your various social media accounts and text messages in-between takes just because you know there's no use in trying: you just can't move your fingers any faster? Rise up, my friends! Take your future into your own hands, and do something with yourself. I know you can improve if you adopt a strategy that is right for you.

Memorize those briefs and phrases, and you will soar!

In stenodarity,

The Steno Duchess