This is the 6th installment in an on-going series on my experience training to be a court reporter .

On a frigid Monday in February, I waited for the  Seventh Avenue bus to take me to the Grand Army Plaza subway station. Once on the train, I ran into an acquaintance from my daughter’s elemetary school. I made a point of not telling her that I was on my way to Park Place for my first day of court reporting school.

I felt stealth, a secret agent embarking on a new career .

When I entered the classroom at the New York Career Institute, more than thirty people were already seated and waiting for the teacher to arrive. At 9:30 on the  dot, Miss G, a skinny woman in late middle age with short spiky hair with specks of grey, entered the room.

The teacher!

She had big expressive eyes and bright red lipstick on her lips. Her outfit, I would later learn, was her teaching uniform: a flannel shirt, a wool scarf, grey sweat pants and white tennis shoes. She looked well put together, even stylish. Maybe it was her hair cut, which was neat and well coiffed.

Miss G, in a voice shrill, sharp and clear, directed a question to the classroom of newbies, mostly women in their early twenties and thirties.  “Why are you here? Nobody comes here without a reason. Rarely do people think of this themselves. They have to be told.”

I was sitting next to M, the grey-haired woman I met at the orientation (“I think you’re in my demographic”). At 63 and 53 respectively, M and I were the two oldest people in the room. As Miss G went around the room, people described aunts who worked as court reporters, friends, and mothers who had done it years ago.

I told the group that I was inspired during jury duty. M mentioned that she looked it up on the Internet.

“It’s the second highest paying job you can get without a college degree.” she told the group.

What’s the first?” someone shouted out.

“Air traffic control,” she said.

The room erupted in laughter. All the faces I would come to know so well blended together that day. There was a man who never came back and a few others we’d never see again. Satisfied with the group’s answers, Miss G addressed the class:

“I am offering you a wonderful, well-paid career. If you work hard and practice and take this vey seriously, there is an opportunity for you here. Don’t squander it. Many people have come through this school. I have seen people who’d never studied before and took to this thing. This was something they were able to do. It has literally saved people’s lives…”

I was moved by the sincerity and passion of her speech. Afterwards, she sent us downstairs in groups to pick up our machines. Most of the class had purchased machines, which wouldn’t be arriving for another couple of months. In the meantime, the school was loaning out what Miss G called clunkers, rusty, old machines used by multitudes before us.

Down in the administration office, there was a room full of clunkers lined up in black canvas bags (not rolling suitcases). I was very excited to receive one and proudly carried it back upstairs. The others were already putting their  machines together. Out of my bag I pulled out the machine itself, the foldable tripod legs, and the awkward metal drawer. Miss G went around the room offering aid to those who needed help. When everyone was set up, she told us to unwrap our first package of steno paper and showed us how to thread it through the machine.

We were ready to go.

Miss G showed us where to rest our fingers on the black keys. We learned a few letters: the two  S’s and the two T’s.

“If the letter is on the left side of the keyboard it’s called ‘initial’ and if it’s on the right side it’s called ‘final,'”she instructed us.

The initial S is hit by the left pinky on the far left of the keyboard (see diagram, above). The final S is hit by the right pinky on the right side of the keyboard (but don’t hit the D and Z by mistake). Sitting at her desk at the front of the room, Miss G began to drill us in a voice something between an army sergeant and a stern piano teacher.

“Initial S, final  S, initial S, final S, initial S..”

“Use the pinky,” she yelled out if she spotted someone who was using their ring finger instead of the pinkie.

“Initial T, final T, initial T, final T, initial T…”

Miss G drilled us for the rest of the class period, keeping an eagle eye out for fingering mistakes. A young woman, who had failed the class previously and was taking it again, sat near Miss G. She wore Pink brand sweat pants, hoodie, and expensive Nike sneakers and used the wrong fingering.

“I told you, use the correct fingers,” Miss G admonished her.

M approached the fingerings with great seriousness, she seemed to be struggling.  That first day I felt surprisingly calm. I enjoyed pressing the keys down as Miss G shouted out the letters. It was a satisfying sensation that reminded me of playing  an instrument. I hadn’t used my pinkies that  way since playing the  guitar. I liked the way it felt.  I almost wished the machine made a musical sound.

The time passed quickly. Before I knew it, it was noon and the class was winding down.

“The party’s over,” Miss G. said to the class. “Go home and practice.”

I was sure I would, and I knew I’d be back the next day.

To be continued…

This is the 5th installment of an on-going series about my experience training to be a court reporter.

There is a long and interesting history of written and machine shorthand. There is even a permanent exhibition, The Gallery of Shorthand: The Evolution of a Timeless Profession, in the Alfonse M. D’Amato Federal Courthouse in Central Islip, Long Island.

Now that sounds like a very worthwhile excursion, doesn’t it?

In lieu of making the trek out to the Richard Meier designed Islip courthouse, I  was able to gather quite a few nifty historical tidbits from their interesting website.

In Ancient Rome there were scribes, individuals responsible for transcribing minutes of the Roman Senate. Before 63 BC they wrote from memory and these transcripts were sometimes published.

In 63 BC, Cicero, the great orator of Rome, developed Tironian Notes, the very  first system of short writing. To save time, this system used letters to represent common words, and left out letters, usually vowels, that weren’t necessary. Sometimes initials or other parts of several words were joined.  Speed was achieved by rarely removing the hand from the wax tablet.

In 59 BC, Emperor Julius Caesar sought to eliminate the secrecy of Senate deliberations, and ordered that they be recorded using Tironian Notes.

Hail Ceasar.

Apparently some Tironean Shorthand is still used in contemporary shorthand such as abbreviating by using only the first letters of common phrases (am, pm, USA).

During the middle ages, shorthand was outlawed because it was  viewed as crytography or secret writing, and therefore inherently evil. Despite the prohibition, monks were allowed to use shorthand to write. And that’s a good thing. Much of what we know about the intellectual and religious history of that time we know form these shorthand writing monks.

But I digress. Machine shorthand, as taught at the New York Career Institute, is what we are interested in here.

We have Miles M. Bartholemew to thank for the invention of the first English-language stenography machine in 1879. That precursor to today’s steno machine utilized dot/dash codes to form one letter at a time. It makes me think of Morse Code. 150 words per minute was the top speed you could reach on this machine. Apparently vowels were eliminated and words were written as phonetic abbreviations.

In 1866,  George Kerr Anderson designed the first word-at-a-stroke shorthand machine called. The Anderson Shorthand Typewriter. It used printed letters  instead of codes and was capable of fast writing speeds.

In 1911, the Ireland Stenotype Shorthand Machine was invented by Ward Stone Ireland. This steno innovator spent six years analyzing the arrangement of letters and sounds in the English language. He’s responsible for the chorded method and the ” two-row, tripartite key arrangement of initial consonants, final consonants, and middle vowels” that those of us who have studied Steno know and love. This groundbreaking system allowed” the greatest output with the fewest strokes.”

Indeed, that is the essence of steno: the greatest output with the fewest strokes. Make THAT your mantra.

This is part 4 of an on-going series about my experience training to be a court reporter.

The afternoon of the orientation for new students, maybe sixty of us were herded into a third floor classroom at the New York Career Institute. I looked around at the people sitting in folding chairs. Most looked only a few years older than my  19-year-old son.

There were white girls, black girls, hispanic  girls, Orthodox Jewish girls, and even a few Orthodox men wearing yamulkes (I later learned that court reporting is quite popular among the Orthodox). The average age was probably 25 but there were a few scattered middle-agers, as well.

I was heartened when I noticed one women with short, grey hair and made a note to speak to her after the orientation.  I struck up a conversation with the young African-American woman sitting next to me. She told me she studied steno in high school. “It was very difficult,” she said.

People sat in groups of two or three, friends from home, from high school. I eyed a table of cookies, donuts and soda but didn’t dare get up. No one did. Everyone seemed nervous, eager for the meeting to begin. I studied the stenotype machine at the front of the classroom. With its black keys, it looked more like a piano than a computer or typewriter keyboard .

When Mr. G, a short Hispanic man, who runs the court reporting program, came into the classroom, the crowd quieted down.

“Are there any paralegal or medical students in the room?” he called out.

Ten or fifteen people raised their hands. He told them to go to another classroom for a separate orientation meeting.

“Now that they’re out of here. Is everyone here registered for court reporting?” he said. There was a chorus of yeses.

“Court reporting is a great career. I did it for 18 years,” he told the group. “You can make a lot of money as a court reporter whether you decide to freelance or work in a court. But it takes a lot of work. Be prepared to practice  two hours every day. Every day. Alright, I’ll give you Sunday off. But you must practice for two hours, six days a week.”

I was starting to stress out. Two hours a day? That seemed like an awful lot of time to devote to that little machine. I was still in denial about how much time and practice it would take to reach the required speed of 220 words per minute. How hard could it be?

I’m not sure if this happened or if I imagined it but I think Mr. G lifted up the stenography machine and hugged it to his chest.  I am certain, however, that he said the following.

“I love this machine. I loved this machine from the minute I saw it. This machine gave me a life, a profession.’

My first thought: I will never love that machine. I was sure of it.

After the meeting I went up to Mr. G with a question:

“I’m a really fast typist, will that help me in court reporting?”

“Not really,” Mr. G told me. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

After that discouraging interchange with Mr. G, I sought out the woman with short grey hair.

“I think we’re in the same demographic,” I said cheerily.

“I don’t know about that. I think I’m a little older than you,” she said. “I’m 63.”

“Okay, you are a little bit older. So what did you think?”

The grey haired woman, who turned out to be smart and friendly, told me that she was excited. She’d been laid off from a development job at a major non-profit and was game for something new.

“I love school,” she said. “I have two master’s degrees. I love to study.”

“But aren’t you worried about learning to type that fast?” I said. “And the textbook. All this stenography. It looks like  gibberish.”

Anxiety was seeping out of me. I needed a reality check.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” the grey haired woman said. We exchanged phone numbers and decided to stay in touch.

For me, the orientation was actually disorienting. Afterwards, my doubts returned with a vengence. Leafing through Therory for Court Reporting Volume 1, the text book for the beginner class, I became unhinged. Why is ate spelled AEUT? Why is sew spelled SWE? Why is will you be HRUB? I wondered to myself.

This is silly, this is crazy. The book’s introduction wasn’t much help :

“The greatess of this keyboard lies in its simplicity. The four fingers of the left hand control all of the beginning consonants by striking two, three, and sometimes four keys at a time…”

What the hell was I getting into? My anxiety turned into full fledged panic. When I got home I was on the verge of tears.

“I’m not going back there. It was a terrible idea,” I told my husband.

He heard me out and didn’t try to change my mind. Just a few weeks before, he seemed shocked when I decided to become a court reporter in the first place. He’d gotten used to the idea, but I don’t think he was really sold on it. The next day, a Friday, I cried to a friend over coffee at Sweet Melissa’s that I had made a terrible mistake.

“Maybe I should learn digital video editing instead,” I remember telling her. I had been a film and video editor in a former career. At least it was  creative.

By Sunday night, I was feeling calmer and a thought floated into my mind. Why don’t I just try it? If this thing is really so wrong for me it’ll be obvious at the first class. If I don’t go, I’ll never know.

I slept soundly that night for the first time in days…

To be continued…

This is Part 3 of an on-going series about my experience training to be a court reporter.

In Janaury of 2011, I put my doubts aside and decided to register for court reporting classes at NYCI. Sitting in the waiting area of the administration office, I was again struck by the plethora of young girls just out of high school, who populated the halls of the school.

I had a real Dorothy moment: You’re not in Park Slope anymore.

The look of the women couldn’t be more different from the schleppy boho meets Agnes B style of Connecticut  Muffin on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. I saw tons of eye make-up, blow-dried hair, big earrings, and stylish clothes a la Forever 21 and Juciy Couture.

Bridge and Tunnel chic with a rolling backpack.

The girls looked well put together and smart.  Not worldly but looking to get ahead in the world. Many, I later learned, were from Staten Island. And many were there for their two-year college degree. As I waited I took at look at one of the school’s brochures:

New York Career Institute provides individuals with a higher educational experience designed to prepare them for productive careers in contemporary fields. The College’s programs offer students the opportunity to build a foundation for lifelong financial independence and success in their professional lives.

A certificate in court reporting is also an Associates Degree, equivilent to two years of college, so there are academic requirements for those with only a high school diploma, like math, English and psychology. Court reporting students are also required to take medical terminology, English for court reporting, courtroom procedures and computers for court reporting.

The director of admissions, who registered me, told me that that I’d be required to take beginner computer classes, because I never took college level computer classes (did they even have computers when I was in college?) and Written and Oral Communication.

I was dumbfounded. Didn’t years as a freelance writer and public speaker count for anything? And what about my computer expertise? I was a blogger, after all. I spoke with the Dean, who told me I could probably test out of the Computer Concepts class but I would not be able to skip the Oral and Written Communications class because I’d never taken a college level speech class. Needless to say, I was irked.

By the end of my registration session, I was registered for three classes: Intro to Court Reporting, Oral and Written Communication, and  Civil Litigation as an elective.

I was set to begin classes in February but not before the new students orientation.

To be continued…

This is Part 2 of an on-going series about my experience training to be a court reporter.

Riding home on the subway after my admissions appointment, with my folder of New York Career Institute materials on my lap, I felt a mix of emotions.  The idea of studying to be a court reporter was like a lifeline. A rope had appeared out of the blue that would, hopefully, pull me out of my mid-life doldrums.

At the same time, the “I’m nots” were reverberating loudly in my head: I’m not young anymore, I’m not the mother of young children, I’m not employed, I’m not rich, I’m not successful, I’m not famous, I’m not especially happy, I’m not secure…

This court reporting lifeline was oddly compelling. At that moment, it seemed like a direct  route to something—a profession—that in my fantasy contained some of the elements that fueled my  passion for life: words, stories, personal histories, characters, listening. The challenge of achieving a steno speed of 220 words per minute was far from my mind.

The economic stability was also very seductive. The flexibility of such career would enable me, I thought, to continue as a writer and creative person. It would be the monetary crutch I needed to survive and move ahead in the world. Court reporting would be my  ticket to success, my armor against failure and economic demise.

In the weeks after my admissions’s appointment, I left the NYCI folder untouched on the dining room table. I entered a period of confusion and felt like I was split in two. “Old Me” was dead set against being a court reporter. She didn’t want to let go of the fantasy of a life as a sucessful writer, blogger and columnist.

“New Me” was being “realistic” and “practical.” She knew I needed to change course and find a way to reliably support the family.

“Old Me” and “New Me” were fighting it out. And they would be fighting it out until I made my decision…

To be continued…