Steno crap, graduation, and all that follows.

[trelobita]

I don't talk about it very much here, but for the last four years, I've been in college with the aspiration of becoming a broadcast captioner. I've also been working fulltime, which is why it took me four years to complete a two year program. *grumble*

For those who don't know (and in Chattanooga at least, that's a LOT of people), all live programming on television has captioning for the hearing impaired provided realtime by somebody in their home. It is done on a steno machine exactly like the kind that court reporters use in court rooms to take down every word that is said on the spot. This is a steno machine:



Steno is like a language unto itself. It is based on phonetics, briefs, and single stroke phrases. To begin working after graduation, I have to be able to write realtime at a MINIMUM of 180 words per minute!

I am currently in the middle of my very last semester. If all goes according to plan, I should be on the air captioning by late August. It has been a long, hard grind, but it's finally going to pay off. And is it ever going to pay off! With pay along the line of $45 per hour for news programs, $55 per hour for sports programs, and $60 per hour for financial and stock programs, I'll be earning more money than I've ever earned in my life. My current pay is $9.77 an hour, just to illustrate how drastic a change this is going to be for me. On top of that, I'll be able to work out of my own home. YES!!!

Once I'm out of school, we'll be able to pay for my husband to get back into college. We could only afford one of us at a time! We'll be able to pay off the mountains of credit card debt we've built up to pay for my education. We'll be able to pay off the remaining $9,000 of a student loan that is still hanging over my head from my venture into art school. We'll be able to afford the film equipment we need to shoot and edit independantly (at least starting out). We'll be able to afford for me to get back into art school.

Best of all, we'll be able to quickly save up what we need to get the hell out of Tennessee and move to California. Many of our friends have already gone there and are managing a living in Los Angeles. Marten and I plan to move to San Francisco, a city we have both been in love with for years after having spent time there.

Now, three months from graduation, all of these things are closer than ever. I'm excited and terrified and very, very ready.

Now, if I could just get up to speed.... I'm hovering somewhere in the 160-170 area. Must get to 180 wpm!!!

Comments

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

I thought this post was major cool and interesting.

[trellia-chan.livejournal.com]

Thank you, love. :) I'm extremely frazzled and terrified by my current semester, and wrote this mostly as a pep talk to myself... reminding myself of why I've been toiling through this for so long.