A Taste of What's to Come

It’s frustrating to talk about court reporting with anybody else in the world.  And I empathize.  Until last year, I didn’t even know it was a career.  I had gotten back from my mission, I’d been living with my parents for about a month, and one day when I was going grocery shopping with my mom, when she said, “Here’s a career you should consider.”

“What’s that?”

“Court reporting.”

I can imagine the blank look on my face.  “What’s that?”

For the next ten minutes walking around Walmart, she told everything that she knew about it (and ten minutes worth is probably all she knew) and had me to talk to a family friend about it.  The job sounded unusual enough to be enjoyable, so even though it took me several months to commit, I knew right then that this was what I was going to do.

So I moved, got into school, and ever since then when people I meet ask what I’m doing, I tell say court reporting, and witness the same blank look I must have had.  “What’s that?”

So here’s my answer to the world.  You know in courtrooms how there’s some guy or gal typing away at a machine recording everything?  That’s gonna be me.

“Oh.” Long pause.  “People get paid for that?”

Actually, I don’t run into this question a lot.  I’m surrounded by very supportive friends who, even though they don’t entirely get what I’m doing, at least recognize that I’m having a good time and it does provide a service.  But I have met a couple people and I know classmates and my teachers have had their fights with folks who believe that court reporting is going to be obsolete.

After all, we live in the technological age.  When we can videotape and audio record everything that’s said, why will our legal system need to rely on court reporters that are prone to human error and frankly, cost more?  Don’t you know we’re in a recession?

I’m going to save my response to that for a future blog.  It suffices me to say that they don’t know what they’re talking about.  Court reporters aren’t being replaced by technology, they are using the technology to improve their craft.  Court reporters are actually making themselves more valuable, but as I say, I’m saving that for a future post.

The question that I get asked all the time, which is natural but it’s so annoying, and it’s annoying because it’s so natural: “How much longer do you have in school?”

My answer is just as annoying and confusing to them: “I don’t know.”

What do you mean you don’t know?

No matter how often I explain it, few ever quite grasp that this is not a normal school.  Certainly not the type of school any of the rest of them are going to.  In America, we have a very rigid educational system; you have semesters or trimesters with homework, and midterms, and finals.  You have a structure of classes to gain your diploma or degree.  You have grades.

None of that happens.  There are no “real” grades.  There are things that we have to learn and tests to pass, but there are no tests.  I haven’t ever had a lecture.  There’s no group work.  “Class” is really just scheduled practice time.  Really, the program is little more than a block for individual practice, kind of like playing the piano without the noise.

But I’ll also have to can of worms this for a future post.  It might even take two posts.  I mostly just wanted to bring up questions that I’m faced with and let you know now what’s coming up in the near future.  I haven’t done much of anything about my program in the nearly seven months I’ve been in there.  If this interests you, look forward.  If not, you’ll be aware of which posts you want to skip.