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finnglas
NAME: Jules
AGE: 36. Feeling it in a lot of different ways lately.
INTERESTS & HOBBIES: Hooboy. Stories, mainly, in whatever form they take. Have a degree in psychology, write for fun, sort-of knit, go to Disney World a lot with my partner (whom I am marrying next year), really getting into accessibility for Deaf and HoH communities because my newly acquired job mostly deals with that, am an ex-Christian agnostic witch, have lived all over but am very Southern, am so old I've forgotten how to describe myself. Am fannish but lately haven't had a fandom I've been super into. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey might be creeping in.
LOOKING FOR: Friend-shapes? IDK, it's a novel idea to think of being able to have real conversations about life again. LiveJournal was so long ago... I do miss being able to click "Like" on people's posts just as a way to say "I've read this, and I support you, but I don't have anything to add," though. Tumblr at least had that much going for it.
ANYTHING ELSE?: I'm all kinds of scattered but I'm mostly pretty friendly! You can literally just start talking to me and that's fine.
ALSO KNOWN AS: I am finnglas on tumblr and pillowfort, julesrkelley on twitter (mostly professional leaning as I'm floundering back into publishing after a several-years hiatus), and was formerly known as mjules on multiple platforms, including LiveJournal. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mjules here on DW is just a straight-import of my LiveJournal from when I deleted my permanent account a couple of years ago but isn't active.)
AGE: 36. Feeling it in a lot of different ways lately.
INTERESTS & HOBBIES: Hooboy. Stories, mainly, in whatever form they take. Have a degree in psychology, write for fun, sort-of knit, go to Disney World a lot with my partner (whom I am marrying next year), really getting into accessibility for Deaf and HoH communities because my newly acquired job mostly deals with that, am an ex-Christian agnostic witch, have lived all over but am very Southern, am so old I've forgotten how to describe myself. Am fannish but lately haven't had a fandom I've been super into. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey might be creeping in.
LOOKING FOR: Friend-shapes? IDK, it's a novel idea to think of being able to have real conversations about life again. LiveJournal was so long ago... I do miss being able to click "Like" on people's posts just as a way to say "I've read this, and I support you, but I don't have anything to add," though. Tumblr at least had that much going for it.
ANYTHING ELSE?: I'm all kinds of scattered but I'm mostly pretty friendly! You can literally just start talking to me and that's fine.
ALSO KNOWN AS: I am finnglas on tumblr and pillowfort, julesrkelley on twitter (mostly professional leaning as I'm floundering back into publishing after a several-years hiatus), and was formerly known as mjules on multiple platforms, including LiveJournal. (
mjules here on DW is just a straight-import of my LiveJournal from when I deleted my permanent account a couple of years ago but isn't active.)
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It's also really cool that you're involved with the Deaf/HoH communities! I work with a lot of kids that are HoH, or even some that are non-verbal, but I'm kinda struggling with learning to sign lol. What kind of accessibility stuff do you have to do for work?
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The gist of it is that the student is given a laptop or a tablet. They use Skype to call me so that I can hear what's going on in the classroom. (Sometimes, depending on the size of the classroom, the professor will wear a microphone. Other times it's just the tablet microphone that we're depending on.) I listen to what's going on, and I type it, usually significantly condensing it to just the main points in order to save time typing and save the student time reading. Depending on the situation, I may also be able to capture other students' questions or discussions. The student and I are both logged in to the same website via a special software so that they see what I'm typing as I'm typing it with no delay.
This way, students can have easy access to what is going on around them as it's happening in real-time and can participate as well. It's especially helpful for students who may have experienced their hearing loss later in life and aren't fluent in ASL, or for situations where an ASL interpreter may not be available or practical. It's extremely rewarding but it's pretty intense. I'm not doing much of it right now since it's winter break, but I'm looking forward to classes starting back up in January so I can get back into it.
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TBH the later in life thing is so true though. I'd never considered it before getting into this field, but so many of my students/clients weren't born HoH or deaf, and the ASL really doesn't apply to them (same with kids who're non-verbal). What made you get into this profession, if it's alright to ask?
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As to what got me into it, the short answer is my best friend. She was looking for a career change for herself and found a company who was sponsoring the training for people who wanted to do this, so she took a chance on it, and while she was training for it, she told me that she thought that I would be good at it and also enjoy it. At the time I was preoccupied with a few other things (like preparing to move 12 hours away) so I kind of shelved that for a later date. Then when I got to the new place, I hated the store that I transferred to within my company, and remembered that she'd thought I would like what she was doing, so I contacted her to ask about it, lol.
The longer answer is that I feel like a lot of my hodgepodge background led me here. My mom did medical transcription when I was younger and sort of trained me in it and used to let me practice on her tapes every now and then because I enjoyed it. Then for a little while I did closed captioning services for a third-party company. I also have done work as a content editor for some small fiction presses, so I have experience with taking content and polishing and distilling it on the fly, which is honestly the hardest part of this job, lol.
The training itself was interesting. The company that I signed with was sponsoring training for new hires, with the caveat that I paid half up front, they paid the other half, and then would reimburse me for my half if I passed the final exam of the training. Training was self-directed via software with a distance trainer looking over my work at various milestones to see how I was coming along. It took me about three months to complete, which seems to be the average. Then I moved into the internship phase, where I shadowed more experienced transcribers for ~30 hours of work.
The first few classes were just me transcribing for myself, no one else seeing the work, but the mentor would send me their file so I could compare my capture to theirs. Then the largest chunk was me shadowing their transcription and sending them MY file for them to grade/comment on. And the very last portion was that I live-transcribed a single class for a client with my mentor also logged in and watching the real-time transcription to grade how I did.
So the training is actually very thorough, which I appreciate because I feel the weight of influencing the quality of these students' education on a daily basis. I had one class where the tablet microphone kept cutting out and I could barely understand the professor, and I felt so bad. I let the student know what was happening and captured what I could, and they said they were able to get enough out of it, but it was nerve wracking. Thankfully by the next class period, the mic was working again.
Different companies do it differently (the best friend who got me into it contracts with several different companies to maximize her work/income) but the one I'm currently with (I may branch out as I feel more confident keeping up with a larger schedule) lets you sign up for a class/student for the whole semester. So say, I would be responsible for transcribing Psych 101 for Jane Doe from January through the final exam in March. It's easier to be familiar with the content and the students' needs that way.
I really love it, though! I'm hoping I can make it work long-term because it pays well and it's stimulating and fulfilling, which are three things most jobs in my life have not been, lmao.
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But I'm amazed at how thorough your training has been? It's not common to hear that a company truly cares for the client's education, and I'm so pleased to hear that yours does! Do you get to keep up with the same student all throughout their academic career? Are they allowed to choose you specifically? : o
Also if it's okay to ask, does the student have to pay out of pocket for this or do they get some kind of grant or something?
What other jobs have you had, if they weren't fulfilling or stimulating? I think the worst one i've had was at a warehouse and it was just ... completely robotic. It made me realize that I'm the type who needs to be with people / working in some kind of human service, lol.
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