Well, this was the first week back for summer session of the judicial reporting program at Madison Area Technical College AKA Madison College, and round one of testing is officially over. After anxiously awaiting the results of my first crack at 190 wpm Q&A, I was both frustrated and encouraged to see a big ol’ 94.1% at the top of my graded transcript. “A 94%," you say, "that’s an A, why so glum?” Yes, in any other program or class or academic setting, a 94% would be fantastic, but for gluttons for punishment known as steno students, a 94% is a big fat fail.
On one hand, I only turned that one in last night because I decided the previous semester to edit and submit at least one edited take a week, no excuses. In that light, I did much better than I expected to. I can also tell that despite being somewhat of a slacker as of late, my speed has actually improved since the end of the spring semester.
On the other hand, being a perfectionist, I hold myself to a standard of 100%. Anything less than that is extremely disappointing. Worst of all, there were a lot of rookie mistakes, like forgetting to capitalize “the Court,” and a superfluous comma after “so.” Get a hold of yourself, woman! Maybe (okay, probably) I’m being too hard on myself, but for goodness’ sake, I’ve been at this for almost two years now!
I’m strangely torn between these positive and negative emotions regarding my first test in about four weeks. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around something not being entirely positive or entirely negative, but I should probably just get used to it because that's life. The dark cloud usually does have a silver lining, but sometimes my binoculars just don't reach that far to see. This time, I've got a front-row seat to this cloud-lining check, so to speak.
With that, I’m going to take it upon myself to practice hard this week, focusing specifically on my weak spots (like contractions, apparently). Then I will "make it work" a la Tim Gunn on Project Runway and try again next Thursday with improved speed and all the moxie I can rustle up by then. 225, here I come!
