Student Recruitment
by Rene’ White, CSR, CRR, RPR

NCRA has just announced that through an informal survey they are hearing that enrollment at court reporting schools is finally on the rise! With that said, we still must do our parts to help encourage young people to be interested in the field of court reporting. Most of the general public does not know the full gamut of services we can provide, such as captioning and CART, as well as serving in the traditional role of judicial reporter. It is our job to get out there and educate them!

As you know, HCRA has a recruiting committee set up for just that purpose. Even as you are reading this, we have volunteers calling local high schools inquiring about career day presentations. Our goal is to hit as many high schools as we can with a trained reporter as well as possibly a student reporter for those career days. The student reporter will be there to provide realtime while you, the seasoned reporter, are speaking. Or if two seasoned reporters wish to team up, that’s fantastic! We’re gathering promotional and contact information from the local schools as well as a wonderful brochure NCRA has published. We also have student reporters preparing handouts of a steno strip attached to its translation so that the students can take those with them.

While we are targeting high schools for now, if you have a child in junior high and have easy access, please let us know if you’re interested in attending their career day. And yes, they even have career days at the elementary level; but that’s just a little young!

If you would like to volunteer, we will provide you with the promotional information as well as answer any questions about things to talk about when giving a career day presentation. We will do everything we can to help you make a strong impression! If you are interested, please call me at (713) 796-9799 or send an e-mail to renecsr@houston.rr.com.

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Zen*: an experience shared by court reporters and interpreters
by Edgar Coronado

Without realizing it, court reporters and interpreters share a valuable tool in their jobs. That tool is a meditative state called Zen. Interpreters, and I am speaking from my own experience, go through that state on a day-to-day basis not even thinking or knowing that it is happening.

Meditation is simply a state achieved when an individual willingly shuts down both sides of the brain to be able to get close to the Real Self. You are probably thinking, “He must be completely nuts.” Comparing our jobs to meditation? Sorry. Here is the explanation: When court reporters and interpreters are working, they do not have to use their own brains to formulate thoughts, which should allow them to relax or at least not think for some time about any stressful situation they may have to set aside the minute the job starts. I cannot really know if a court reporter is able to think while she/he is trying to channel what the client is saying into the stenograph machine, but I am certain that if there were any thoughts interfering, the job would be a lot harder to do. The same thing, of course, applies to interpreters as well. We also have to blank our minds out in order to translate efficiently from one language to another.

Patience, another Zen quality or requirement to achieve that meditative state, is something we all must share while at work; and it is probably the hardest one to maintain in situations like:

· Two attorneys talking at the same time.
· A witness who actually needs the interpreter but speaks some English, or thinks he does, and blurts out an answer in something that has the resemblance of that language, but a very slight one at that.
· The objections that come with the territory, but could be annoying anyhow.

I could go on talking about more of these things but it would probably take a few more pages and they are things that we all know already.

Intuition, another Zen tool, is developed with time, but in this case I believe I have got that one under control. I intuitively know that whatever job I get to do will be done along a super nice court reporter. Honestly, this hasn’t failed me so far. Now, my advice to you ladies and gentlemen of the Court Reporting World would be:

“Develop your intuition so you will know when you will get a good interpreter ahead of time and visualize getting one who will speak clearly, will write down spellings for you and hand you the sheet used to jot down all those spellings at the end of the job.” Do not forget to visualize one with good handwriting.

Please continue helping us when attorneys go on and on, expecting us to remember every single word they say, by reading back the questions to us. That ability you have to read all those symbols still baffles me, but it has saved my neck on numerous occasions; and for that, I will be forever grateful. For my colleagues in the business, I will visualize rooms full of Realtime Court Reporters as a New Year’s resolution for 2003. Those laptops are a gift sent from heaven, even if Mr. Gates gets the biggest cut.

Cheers!

* a form of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition.

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