Will everyone just s$%&-@#!

Everyone is back this week for crunch time. We have a full itinerary that kicked off with a discussion and role-playing on journalism and trauma, then t-line speed tests. Tomorrow is photojournalism. Wednesday is broadcast journalism. We have deadlines for the independent and I’m still trying to adapt to having to much blood in my brain—sorry, bad joke about being upside down again.
I’ve been a little bit stressed about being back down here. It was hard to come back, not because there is anything wrong with Brisbane–I just didn’t realize until I went home how much I really like home where I know all the roads and potholes and frost heaves, where the leaves change colours and winter snows are just around the corner.
Needless to say, with all this going through my head, t-line has not been a top priority. And the class started off predictably dodgy. I could master 50 wpm but kept tripping up on prefixes, suffixes, the pl, cn, cm, letter-r combos, and of course, how to spell words in general (I’ll edit this before posting). Julie pushed for 60 wpm minute. Joe did awesome, nailing it on the first try. The rest of us struggled. Myself, I could keep up for 1/2 to 3/4 but then fell behind.
I finally resolved myself to not making 60 wpm. The rest of the day was therefore, purely for practice. And then it happened. I got on a role. I was writing at 60 wpm. I wasn’t falling behind. Julie stopped and I madly scribbled down the last few words, thinking I probably don’t have 98% but I’m really, really close. And suddenly, as I scribbled, Julie and John started whispering about who should pay for the coffee that John had just brought up. I couldn’t help myself. Without taking my eyes off the page I yelled “SHUT-UP!” I may have repeated the command, I’m not sure. I was just so close I couldn’t bear to loose those last few words that were rapidly fading from my brain.
I passed–100 per cent on that exercise. I past my shorthand for the course, the one part I was most worried about, although word of advice, it’s really, really not a good idea to tell your teacher to shut-up, no matter what the reason!