Slop Vs. Drop

Should I slop, or should I drop? That is a question that seems to face many students, including myself. I used to be a slop girl. I figured if I could get a stroke down, any stroke down, then I could probably figure it out or guess what it was supposed to be later, and I have to tell you that seemed to work pretty well until, all of a sudden, it didn't.

I passed through my 80s, my 90s, my 100s and even all the way through my 130s with messy notes. Then, with 140 as my goal, I could no longer read anything. The small mistakes I was making at 90 wpm turned into huge mistakes when I got to 140. Also, I was always running out of time when I was transcribing my tests. I spent so long guessing what I meant to write that I couldn't get through the whole test and I would turn it in without even proofing it. Shame on me, tsk, tsk, tsk.

I have now really been trying to force myself to drop before I slop. It kills me every time I drop, because I never did that before. But, as I am now learning, dropping is better because it does not reinforce bad behavior. Every time I accepted a sloppy outline and messy transcript, I taught myself, that it was okay to do that. It's not. The bad outlines have now become ingrained in my head and I have to work twice as hard to correct them. It's brutal. I've been sitting in trail class, focusing on correcting bad habits that I've had since theory.

Although it's frustrating and exhausting, it's starting to help. My trail speed notes are beautiful. (My goal speed is full of holes where I dropped words, but what can you do?) The time I spend transcribing has reduced and I've even had time to print my work and proof it on paper rather than a computer screen before I turn it in. I'm optimistic about a big breakthrough happening soon. I'll keep you posted.