Saturday, May 1, 2010

It's gotta be a decision. It has to.

PhotobucketFourth CCP skills attempt down... and I mean DOWN. Fallen like a diaper full to its 15- pound capacity.

Granted, I've had some lousiness lately--my steno writer went on the fritz, so I had to send it away for repair--it came back quickly, but in the meantime I had to get readjusted to writing on a Stentura, and then re-readjust to writing on a LightSpeed again.

And a couple of tornado warnings.

Not to mention the dent I put in a nun's car door a couple weeks ago. But anyway.

I did all the right things. I practiced high-speed material EVERY DAY. I've been CARTing nearly every day the past month. I did my best to entertain only POSITIVE thoughts and avoid negativity. My CART output gets better and better.

So it's test day, and I practiced some high-speed material beforehand. I printed out an encouraging e-mail from a friend. I played positive, upbeat music in the car on the drive over. I wore my Test Shirt. I set up my laptop just like I'm CARTing, any other day, no biggie, no problem. I wrote my affirmations on a piece of paper to put where I could see it during the test.

One of my affirmations is "I am the best in the world at what I do." I ripped off borrowed that phrase from wrestler Chris Jericho (he says this catchphrase a lot), and wrote that phrase by his picture, which I put on the table as well.



You know, for inspiration.*

And the test began, and I made errors, but soon I hit a stride. I did have stretches where I nailed that thang! Problem is though, the stretches weren't five minutes long. I did my best to LET IT GO. If I made an error, fine; move on. Relax. RELAAAAAX!!!!!

It's hard to stay positive. But I've got to DECIDE to stay positive. I've got to. That's the only way I'll ever kill this thing and move on.

I come home and find this article from Cracked Magazine. (Mind you, this humor site in general isn't for young kiddos or people who are allergic to cuss words. But this is a good article.) Getting a BIG SKILL will take BIG EFFORT. I'm NOT one hundred percent engaged in practice. I'd say I was about 80 percent engaged.

So I'm going to work hard and practice hard. And I'll take it again. And again. As many times as I need to.

That's my decision.


*Don't be nailing me for reposting the pic, Men's Fitness. It's free publicity, and you know it.

2 comments:

  1. Oooh, we should spur each other on. Here I am, having captioned for BBC Television, having done CART full-time, including for a Ph.D. neuroscience major, several undergrads, a million (seems like) graduate-level English and philosophy classes (including the Bible as literature, and if you don't think THAT has challenging vocab, you've got another think coming!), and going on three years of medical school, not to mention sex talks and locavore talks and speeches up the wazoo of every imaginable topic. And I passed my RPR on the first try way back when, when everyone else begged for a do-over and the professor was about to do it, when I said, "Wait a minute! I think I got it!" and I was the closest one sitting to the open window when the lawnmower went under it (hence the reason for the cries of "foul!"), and so they had to keep the test and I was the only one who passed. And yet, when I got to my two attempts at the CRR, I got too caught up in being perfect and therefore dropped more than the allowed # of words in a row (so automatic fail, even though I got fewer than the allowed errors, if that makes sense) and the second time I never made it to the test because my flight was canceled. I felt like it was A Sign, and up till now I really didn't feel it mattered. But now, with work so hard to come by, IT MATTERS, and I need to pass that friggin' thing. Gahhhhhhh.

    I hope you did better than you think you did this time, and passed. Or if not, we should get together. Work is about to be almost nonexistent for me, and I'm determined to start practicing more. (hard to practice AND work, I find) Sigh.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Isn't it crazy how the CRR is a mind game sometimes? Sometimes I wish I could bring my student/client to the test, and she could watch the CRR as I wrote it!

    I do know for sure that I didn't pass--we were allowed to look at it AFTER we made our ASCII and before we deleted it. I still turned it in anyway, dadgum it.

    Let's get this thing passed and over with!

    ReplyDelete

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