After several attempts over the past year and a half or so I’ve finally succeeded in establishing a solid daily study routine. This morning I finished Lesson 29 in Simplified so I’m almost half way through the core book, woot!
Reading was slow and awkward in the early lessons and made it hard to create consistent study. What helped me get past it was acquiring a copy of Most Used Shorthand Words and Phrases (Kessinger Rare Reprints). I spent a week reviewing all the theory I’d covered so far with a fresh, expanded word bank and it made a huge difference. The word list given in the book with each lesson simply wasn’t enough examples of the new theory for it to really stick. Now it’s part of my regular study. I supplement the new “vocabulary” for every single lesson.
I’m starting to acquire a certain impatience to get through the entire book due to what for me are certain negative aspects of the reading and writing material. The first is that the male bias (due to the era in which the book was written) is really irritating to me as a woman. I can’t help thinking, “Yo. Mr. Gregg. Women are executives too.” The redundancy of words and phrases and lack of intellectual depth also threatens to drive me mad. I understand the redundancy as a learning device of course, and I can see the reasons behind lack of depth, but that doesn’t make it less frustrating. Every single day I think. “Geez, I can’t wait to finish this book so that I can go read normal and more interesting stuff posted in the forum!”