YAY!!

Hi, everyone!

Hope you are all doing well. :) I sure am. Today I passed my 180 4-voice!! I corrected it, and I was able to have 3 more errors and still pass. So that meant that a teacher would have to grade my test as well to double check how I corrected it, and to mark me off for any punctuation errors.

Seeing as I only had 3 more errors I could get, I pretty much just accepted the fact that I was not going to pass this one. I made the mistake of doing that a couple months ago with another 180 4-voice. I had like 15 more errors I could get, and I went beyond that just with punctuation errors alone! It was a hard test to punctuate because it had run-on sentences, fragments, you name it.

Anyway, so I waited for the teacher to grade my test, and he told me I passed!! I was sooo excited! He was, like, "Yeah, your punctuation was great. You don't have a problem with that." That made me feel great. :)

So now I need to focus on getting a 200 4-voice or a 225 Q/A. Then I will only need to pass the qualifier before I take the state test! I'm hoping I can take the next CSR test in February 2012. Fingers crossed.

XO, Aly

Feeling motivated

Most of the time I find it hard to get motivated to practice at home after a day of schooling, and always a little harder on the weekends. My excuse for during the weekdays when I have school, is that I'm mentally exhausted, and also my hand muscles feel strained because of the 225 - 240wpm sustained Q/A or even literary material during 2 out of the 3 periods of my school. I know I need to hear speeds that fast because I need to train my brain to listen that quickly and then transfer what they're saying to my fingers instantaneously, but I feel that sometimes my fingers are so out of control that I'm just slapping random keys and if I had my realtime plugged in, only about 2% of the words would come out correctly. I feel like that is just hindering my writing because my fingers are not learning the correct strokes, they're just going everywhere.

One of the things that motivates me a little more to practice is if I practice to something interesting to me. It's so refreshing to be able to just practice to something interesting when all day at school I'm hearing jury charge after jury charge, and I can pretty much recite those word for word now. And one of my teachers likes to torture us -- I'm pretty sure -- because she will sometimes decide to read us zoning regulations or estate planning at excess speeds of 200+. I just want to shoot myself to put me out of my misery! lol

So today, I asked my mom if she would be able to read me some short stories out of Readers Digest. Side Note: The teacher that likes to torture us sometimes breaks up the monotony with stories out of there so she redeems herself with that. :) But anway, so I had my mom read the short story once, slow, and then a second time fast. Her fast speed was probably about 200wpm which is good. :) She read to me for about 40 minutes because she had other errands to do today. It was a good little practice, and then for about 30 minutes after that I put briefs in my dicionary. I want my realtime to look amazing!!

That's what I practiced for today. :) I know it's not much, but it's better than none at all. I need to start getting ready for the day as well because I'm going to a BBQ with all my friends for a pre-4th of July party. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

XO, Aly