My first standard, with-a-working-reporter internship experience. My host reporter was David, a very experienced, very skilled reporter who has mentored several students from our school. The locale was the D.C. Contract Appeals Board.
I was up and ready to go in good time (miraculous, considering that the night before I'd found I'd lost my bank card, and had been obsessing about that practically all night!). I had my writer charged, plenty of paper, supplies, a notepad for taking notes, stickies to enable me to have a notepad on my machine, and along the way I picked up a sandwich and bottled water (upon the advice of David, since the water at the building was not supposed to be terribly drinkable).
I reached the metro, rode the escalator down . . . and was confronted with a mob of people! "Ohmigosh," I shrieked internally, "the metro is down! I can't get to the job! What do I do!" I took a breath and told myself, "Calm down. You'll wait fifteen minutes, and then go up and take a cab." (One of the greatest things about D.C. is the metro. One of the other greatest things is the plenitude of cabs on the street.) A train came -- and it was packed! I couldn't get on, and I began my internal wailing again. "Calm down," I repeated to myself. "If another train doesn't come in five minutes, go upstairs and take a cab." A train arrived, I got on, and was at the job site in good order (about 30 minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin).
David greeted me and helped me to set up for the day. He located me across from him, so that we faced each other. Behind him was the witness. To his right, my left, was the judge. To his left, my right, were the attorneys. I gulped when I saw the two tables, two attorneys each, all on my right side. In school, I had gravitated more towards the "round robin" method of identifying speakers, and there was no way I could "round robin" four attorneys on one side! I might have been able to mentally shift two to my left side, but I decided I was just going to have to tough it out and use a variant of their names.
David showed me -- and I diligently copied for myself -- forms for charts of the people in the courtroom (with designations), charts for exhibits, charts for witnesses, all marked with the date and the venue. I checked out his set-up. He uses an older writer (oh, gosh -- I've forgotten the name! Big blocky kind) in conjunction with a laptop. He also had a tape recorder set up next to him.
And then we were off! I could not believe how quickly the hearing started. Somehow, it always seemed on TV (stop giggling at me <G>) that things sort of geared up slowly, but no!
There were a lot of terms that were new to me. I consider myself pretty well read, and this was not extraordinarily technical, but it was a construction case, and there were a lot of construction terms that I didn't know. I also realized some holes in my knowledge of briefs! Not to say that briefs are the be-all and end-all of writing, but they are useful for standard stuff. While I'd learned briefs for "Plaintiff's Exhibit", "Government's Exhibit", etc., I had never gotten one for "Appellant's Exhibit" and "Appellee's Exhibit". (I went with PLAX and PLAOEX, respectively.) I was also surprised that I didn't have a phrase for "recognize". It seemed that practically every witness was asked, "Do you recognize this document?" or "Do you recognize this signature?" (I decided on DAOURNZ.)
We were writing for about an hour-and-a-half to two hours at a time. The morning went very quickly. By the time we finished up in the afternoon, though, my hands were exhausted!
I was also, frankly, demoralized. I had not kept up. The speakers had not sounded extraordinarily fast. I left very close to tears.
There were bright notes, of course. I was surprised to find that designating speakers by name had gone much better than it had when I tried it in class. I think that's because in class I had to think first "who's the speaker," then "who is the speaker supposed to BE," then "how did I designate the speaker?" With this hearing, since I had no other association for the speakers, it was much more natural. (Although I had a hard time "properly" handling the judge's questioning of a witness. While I know how to designate the Court, when there was question-and-answer rhythm, it was just too easy to make the judge Q. And, once again, the speakers were "reversed" -- this time consistently! -- for me, and that caused confusion.)
It was a great experience, and I learned a lot. But . . . but, but, but.
Lessons Learned:Prepare chart forms for exhibits, witnesses and their examination, etc.
Brief forms for "do you recognize" (DAOURNZ), "appellant's exhibit" (PLAX) and "appellee's exhibit" (PLAOEX).
"Sports" water bottle with a spout (much easier than worrying about whether a glass will swoosh up too much liquid, and can easily be stored back in a briefcase).
Would you like to go to the next internship experience or return to the main page of the Court Reporting Students' Online Support Center?