And yes, I AM still alive!
I apologize for the absolute stillness on this blog as of late. It wasn't that I'd lost any interest to write--far from it!
In face, after the days (and lessons) began ticking by, I thought to myself, "Hell, I'll just hold off until I hit the next big milestone!"
And that milestone is that I have just completed all 40 lessons of StenEd theory! Woot! I feel quite accomplished!
Remember way back with my earlier post Setting a Goal? Well, I'm so pleased that I was able to fulfill it!
Seeing as I've been attending class/lab four days a week, from opening to closing time, it should come as no surprise, and just because I've finished theory doesn't mean I'll be stopping my routine. Quit the contrary, things are really ramping up!
Let me talk about how interested the past week or two has been.
While steadily progressing through the last six-or-so lessons, I'd actually begun dabbling a bit in Bridge lessons, as well as attending some 80 Speedbuilding classes.
There is a certain luxury about "just auditing" that really takes the pressure off of performing during those classes. But they were still quite a learning experience! Getting used to the 80-100 wpm speed, the demand of flying fingers, and the realization of how darn useful briefs will be!
Truth be told, I haven't actually formally completed a single Bridge lesson yet, so I'm okay with cutting myself some slack. Let me explain first what "Bridge" refers to.
It's a special set of lessons designed to help "bridge" students over from the typical 40-60 wpm dictation during lessons into 80+ wpm speed-building classes. Apparently, way back when, a lot of students were getting really discouraged at the early speed-building classes, and were dropping out.
Bridge consists of 32 lessons with about 10 new briefs for incredibly common and useful phrases. The first lessons includes briefs for "as soon as", "as a matter of fact", "as a result of", etc...
See? You can see how common these phrases just spit out of someone's mouth.
One other interesting thing that happened to me was that I tried a 80 Literature test...and I believe that I passed! I had to mark up my mistakes myself, and if my calculations are correct, then I passed it! That's somethin'! Although I chalk it up to the content of the dictation being pretty easy. And in fact, most of my mistakes were silly typos made during transcription! In a way, I felt as though my notes were better than the final paper! Such silly, silly mistakes. If I let my mind sit on it too long, I find myself getting irked by it again.
The important thing is that I can foresee entering speed-building as being very doable!
And like my first goal of completing lesson, I would like to go out on a limb here and strive to reach the 120 speed-building classes by the end of the summer session (8/2/2013)!
Stick around and see how it goes!
Current Lesson -- Bridge Lesson 1
