Hello again! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and some much-deserved time off. Tonight I had the chance to go on SpouseBuzz, their live radio show. It was really cool. When they asked me for a final comment, I couldn't help but think of how awesome TRS/TRSi is as a military spouse community. In a time when it's not so popular to be associated with the military, it's so nice to log on to the computer and know there is a whole community there waiting to be there for you. The hosts of SpouseBuzz responded saying that that was a common theme on their website/radio show as well. It's nice to know that other people out there know what you're going through.

Work was good today. It was really hard to get out of bed at 430 this morning. I took yesterday off for our anniversary. I started on some OB/GYN reports which are always interesting. One of the most difficult doctors on my account is an OB/GYN and I had a bunch of his reports today. From the samples on TRS's T-Drive, it was way easier to get through them. There is actually a compiled list of most of the docs' samples that you can look at to try to get an idea of what they are saying. It's awesome. You can also pull up previous reports from any patient's record. Once you get that HIPAA agreement signed and you're an employee, it gets much easier in regard to this type of thing. It also helps me a lot with the formatting issues I had while I was a student.

Have a wonderful night and New Year. Tomorrow Jack starts "daycare" at his friend's house. I think he's really going to enjoy having someone to play with for a few hours while I work. I'm sure the 2 kids (Hailey is 22 months) will only teach each other wonderful, kind, developmentally-sound things. (YEAH RIGHT!) Good luck to Hailey's mom, and thanks for helping out.

Today was a really good day. At the beginning of my shift, Liz gives me a list of reports to type for the day. For right now, I have to load them all manually into the platform since they are still dead files. There is nothing cooler than finishing up a whole big list of reports! I got my QA review back today from that doctor I was complaining about the other day. I got a 99.1% on it! I totally wasn't expecting that! Just goes to show that if you work really hard, you can do a good job on even the most difficult dictations.

On a more personal note, I like my hours a lot. I always wanted to be a mom/wife that got up really early and had the house going before anyone else woke up. I like getting up early. It gives me a chance to get in a few hours of quiet before the day starts for everyone else. It also allows me to be done for the day by 2 p.m. That's right around the time of Jack's second nap (That's right, you heard me right, he takes 2 naps still!) so when I'm done working he goes down and I can get my chores done. When I'm done with the transition period, I'll go to 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. That will certainly be more challenging. I have a hard time staying up until 10 p.m. and that was before I started waking up this early! It'll work out.

This is the sunrise off of our lanai this morning.

It's been a while since I had a doctor that made me almost curse at the computer. Today I had one again, and it brought back awful memories! It wasn't that he was so hard to understand. He talked really fast, then he'd stop, take a drink, look at his pager, and then start talking really fast again. I need to get used to my fast forward pedal; I'm not sure I've ever used it before today. I guess that's something you have to take advantage of when you're working on production. No one pays you for listening to dead air. It was so frustrating. Sometimes he'd go so slowly that I hit the "speed" button 4-5 times just to deal with him.

Other than that guy today, work has been going really well. I had a call with HR today, Jennifer was really nice. We talked about benefits and timesheets and some other important stuff. With Tim being in the military, we never had to even think about health care costs, pros and cons, etc. I actually don't really know anything about that stuff! Jennifer was very helpful, just like everyone else I have encountered so far.

Working 8 hours is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Jack only gets restless in the last 2 hours or so. My sister is here visiting us before Christmas and she is following him around all the time and they both love it! Once the holidays are over, he will go to his friend's house for a few hours in the morning for daycare. It's really more so he can play with his friend's while my face is stuck in the computer. That and, he's been home with me for 1-1/2 years with undivided attention. It's time for him to get out and get some social skills! This is us being silly preparing for the cold Connecticut weather.

Well I've been working for 3 full days now. It's so cool! Everyone at TRS is so nice, just welcomed me right into their community. They have a Yahoo group too, like our AHDI chapter. The tech guys are awesome, they've already helped me a few times. I really like working so early in the morning. It's nice to have a quiet house and it's nice to be done by the early afternoon. The platform I've been using is pretty easy to get around. The settings are a bit different than they will be when I'm officially working but I think it's pretty comparable. Overall it's been a really good experience and totally worth all the hard work in the internship. The people at TRSi knew what they were doing when they designed that program. What a great transition to work.

This is Jack making Christmas cookies! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy new year.

Well, the catch phrase for my blog is to watch me go from being a student to the real world of transcription. Today I officially entered the real world! After I got some technical issues worked out with my headset, I was able to logon to the platform and hear my first dictations. The work I'm doing right now is more like QA than anything. The reports are already typed and they have mistakes in them that I have to find and fix. It's really cool.

In my orientation with Liz (the program coordinator) she said that these exercises would be a good tool to get me used to the doctors and some of the terms and phrases they use. The 2 doctors that I had today were completely familiar. I had them for weeks in the internship and the reports I got done today were pretty easy! Gosh, the first day of the internship was WAY harder than this. This is what the internship was designed for. After all those months of crying and being ready to give up (any of you feel the same ever?!?) it's all paying off! Now I am in the real world and I'm getting paid for what I do, and I already DID all the hard work.

I'm sure that Liz picked very easy dictations for my first day, but now I know I can do it. Jack was pretty good...it's been a few weeks in between the internship and now working for me so he has to get used to it all again. My working hours are 5am-2pm Hawaii time so I can get in a good few hours before he even gets up.

The tech support guys were awesome and such a great help getting everything set up. Liz is great, she has such patience already. I'm so happy to finally be here and I feel so confident that I'll be a really good MT some day!