TONIGHT, A LESSON IN "THE PURPOSE OF THE FLASH DRIVE"

I've got good news, wait let me start over, I've got GREAT news and of course, bad news. Starting with the GREAT:

I passed!!! I passed my 140 LIT tonight at 97.6% accuracy. I'm still in shock. I say that because I'm always confident when transcribing, however my confidence soon fades to panic as I'm correcting my work and start checking off error after error after.... But tonight, my confidence paid off!! What this means is that I now have 2 tests at 160 wpm that I have to pass in order to complete that portion of the class requirements. I have to do this by mid-August.

LESSON IN LITERARY:

When I talk about "Literary" or "LIT", that means the dictation material we were given in class on that particular night. Literary in our class is mainly defined as when a Congressman/woman or Senator, the President, or whoever is giving a speech. Ours usually start off with, "Mr. Speaker, I rise in support..." or, "Mr. President, I want to talk to you today..." It's usually about a bill being presented in the House or discussing issues on the House floor, etc. The President's State of the Union address would also be considered literary. There are certain cases in which the dictation is so far off in left field, it throws us for a loop. Such as tonight, we had material about people choosing vacation destinations based on novels and films they read or see. Such as Jack the Ripper, Harry Potter, etc. That test through me for such a loop, I can't even remember the material. So that's the lesson for this post. More to come.

On to the bad news. We have a dictionary in our system that keeps all of our "codes". My language is somewhat different from the computer system. We all have our own language, we all make up our own "codes", and more often than not, it's not going to match the default dictionary in the system. We have to save our dictionary so that each time we use the program to practice and test, it'll automatically come out in English using OUR words, not the computer. Also, when the computer doesn't recognize a code at all, it'll appear on screen in that "code" and not in English. That's where transcribing comes into play, when we have to go back through our transcript and change these words back to English. Point being, the more words the computer recognizes, the more accurate our transcript will be from the onset and less time it will take to clean it up. Well, since January, I've been working on my own personal dictionary, updating it every single night with my own words. I've been saving my dictionary on the school's computer. Yes, I was told to save it on a flash drive, but I was also told I could use the school's computer. I figured, hey it's easier, why not. But no, Kim was sooooo wrong. I found out tonight that when they updated the computers, they deleted everything that was on there!! OMG, I panicked!! I tried to stay cool on the outside, but freaking out on the inside. I lost all my work!!! There's not much I can do because it's my own fault for not getting a flash drive in the first place. Lesson learned, lesson learned the hard way! So this means I have to get a flash drive and rebuild my dictionary from scratch now. Oh well...it is what it is.

That's all for now. Til next time!