Being There

I heard part of a radio interview with a man who wrote a book about the Inquisitions.  For background, the Inquisitions occurred generally in the medieval or middle ages, from around 1200 to 1500.  The Inquisitions employed various means of persuasion and/or torture to get people to admit to heresy against Catholicism.  The author of the book said that one of his greatest tools in doing his research was the records kept of the actual "interviews" with those being persuaded (re: tortured).  He said the victim's voices spoke to him through the ages.  I was okay with the author up to that point, but then he spoke contemptuously about the "secretaries" who sat in the corners, without emotion, taking down what was being said.  He said they were like accountants, working without emotion.

Do the "secretaries" in the corner remind you of anyone? First of all, they were probably scribes, considered to be a highly skilled profession.  Maybe some of us are even descended from scribes.  My second problem with his remark is that he assumes they were without emotion.  Were they?  Or were they just compartmentalizing their emotion while working so that they could actually do the very important job of keeping a record?  And finally, if these scribes hadn't been present, hadn't done their job without emotion, the author would not have these records to help him hear the voices through the ages.

How do you handle emotions while taking down the record?  We've probably all heard some brutal stuff.  When I worked in the DA's Office I saw some graphic photos.  I have to admit, it really didn't bother me.  Maybe it's because it was photos, maybe it's because I didn't know the people, maybe there's something wrong with me.  Or maybe I'm exactly suited to doing the job of Being There, writing the spoken word and not getting distracted by my own feelings.  I don't know.

I do know that if you're going to do this job you have to be comfortable with yourself as simply a neutral element in the room.  You should not inject yourself into the proceedings unless it has to do with keeping the record (can you spell that please?).  This takes a lot of self-discipline.  But without this discipline imagine what kind of record we would have of the Inquisitions if one of the scribes stood up and said "Stop using the rack on that man, can't you see he's told you all he knows!"  I would imagine the scribe would be the next for the rack and then what kind of record would we have.

Court reporters are masters of self-discipline.  We practice our writing, we bite our tongues, we sit still for hours on end without saying a word, we have to pee, we get thirsty, we sneeze, all while everyone around us keeps talking and we keep writing it all down...just the words, no emotion for the benefit of the record and those who rely on the record, in the near future, or hundreds of years in the future.

Long Live The Scribes Who Sit In The Corner!

Being A "Wordie"

I've called my blog "The Voices In My Head", not because I have a mental health disorder (although maybe I do), but because as a court reporter I am constantly listening, listening, listening.  And while I am listening to the judge, the lawyers and the people they represent speak, there is also another voice in my head saying things like "How can I write contemporaneously quicker?", "Why does he keep saying contemporaneously?  Why can't he just say "at the same time"?  I have a one stroke abbreviation for that phrase."

You've probably heard of the term "foodie".  I guess foodies are people that love to learn about, view TV shows about, and eat food.  I am a "wordie".  I am interested in words and language.  I look up words I don't know (thank you Kindle).  As a college student my favorite subject was linguistics.  I was particularly interested in the different ways that men and women use language. 

Working in a courtroom all day is like working in a laboratory for language.  Most lawyers are very skilled communicators, in the setting of the courtroom.  For example, the judge asks an attorney a question that the lawyer either doesn't know the answer to, or the truthful answer would be detrimental to his/her client, and that lawyer will dance all around the question and never really answer the actual question.  At that point the voice inside my head is screaming "Ask him again!" or "Tell him to answer the question directly!". 

(By the way, I'm absolutely sure that I'm not using the quotes correctly in this post.  Please forgive me.)

Because court reporters are so engaged in everything that is being said, we often hear things that others miss.  Although I must say my judge usually catches all the good stuff.  When I did depositions the double and even triple negative statements that people used worried me.  I wondered if the lawsuit actually went to trial what would happen to those double and triple negatives.  Would they let the person clarify their answer?  Would they assume I made a mistake?  Would the whole outcome of the case depend on that answer?

People make mistakes all the time when speaking...all the time.  We all misspeak, judges, lawyers, doctors, engineers, housewives, court reporters, everybody.  These mistakes just wash over most people, but as court reporters we commit these misspeakings to paper and so we notice them more.  Those kinds of speaking errors become one of the things the voice in my head talks about.

But I love the voices in my head.  They encourage me to write quicker, more accurately.  When I was in freelance they helped me get through long, boring depositions that went past 5PM by helping me calculate how much money I was making per page.   Go ahead, keep talking, I need a new dishwasher. 

There's a very Zen-like quality to court reporting.  There's something very peaceful about sitting at your machine, quietly taking down what everyone is saying, and not have to solve anybody's problems or answer anybody's questions.  You're the neutral party in the room, you and your voices.

Introduction

Hello future friends.  My blogger name is StenoLou.  I'll explain my blogger name in a later post.  This is a blog for court reporters, court reporting students, or just people that I told about my blog.  I have no agenda for this blog, it's just to share my thoughts on court reporting.  For this first blog allow me to introduce myself.

I'm a pretty average working court reporter.  I'm a middle aged mom with two teenage boys.  I've been married for 20+  years.  I live in Buffalo, New York.  I had two other careers before going to court reporting school.  I have been a court reporter since November 12, 2001.  The reason I remember that date exactly is because the freelance firm that hired me wanted me to start on November 11 (Veteran's Day) but my kids were off of school that day so I asked if I could start the next day.  I was sure I already made my future employers angry with me by being inflexible due to my children's schedule.  In reality, they weren't mad at all.  (BTW, one of my new bosses was my sister-in-law so that just shows you how crazy I was to think they'd be mad at me.)

I worked at that freelance firm for nine years.  I did all the usual assignments...depositions, hearings, courtroom work, arbitrations.  Then in March of 2010 I was hired off of a Civil Service list and went to work for the District Attorney's Office as a grand jury reporter.  That was a job I loved, not only because the county paid for all of my family's medical insurance, but also because I worked for the first time with a group of other reporters, hand-in-hand.   As a freelance reporter I always worked alone.

In the fall of 2010 the State of New York offered an early retirement incentive to its employees and several reporters in the court system decided to retire.  I was on that Civil Service list too, the money was significantly better, and so after only nine months at the DA's Office I went to work for the New York State Courts.

All of this leads me to right now, working in Family Court on a very snowy, windy day in which I can't go for a walk at lunch so I finally decided to do my blog, hoping that maybe this will count for CE credits some day.  I am an RPR, hoping to be a CRR, so CE credits are something I worry about from time to time.

I hope this blog entertains you.  I want to blog about things that happen on the job, the people I work with, my thoughts on our profession, strategies for dealing with work and life's pratfalls. You'll also probably learn much more than you want to know about my husband, sons, dog, and all of my various outdoor adventures.

Well, that's enough for now.   It's Friday, which is bagel day around here, so I'm going to get one of the bagels the judge brought in.