Students: Transcribe your way to straight A's

There are more uses for owning a transcribing machine than just if you
are a medical or legal transcriptionist. For anyone who is taking
any sort of class, or for high school or college students, transcribing
your notes is a must to do well in any class.

Most instructors, I think, allow cassette recorders in class and I've always felt it
was very distracting to take copious notes. Why not just have your
hands free and really listen in and concentrate on what the instructor is saying, rather than your face pressed to paper, writing frantically, only to never be able to read, or understand in context, later, what that instructor said. And at test time, to be confronted with your, or at least in my case, undeciferable and unorganized chicken scrawl "notes."

My Panasonic Standard Cassette Transcriber literally got me through college, and even if you always take perfectly neat notes, you gain something by typing back the lecture, you could start your own note taking service for other students, and you do learn to type faster! It just facilitates the learning retention process by typing back and relistening to a lecture that you either may have fallen asleep in, or were lucky enough to be able to concentrate on without frantic scribbling.

Time consuming? Not really. You don't hand write every word that comes out of an instructor's mouth. In a standard 2-hour twice a week college class, I remember at least an hour of digression, or hopefully, a half hour or so of coughing spasms, so I would only spend a couple of hours transcribing, and week by week, have beautifully configured notes, far better than what I or anyone else would be able to scrawl out on the fly.

So, you aren't really typing every word. But at the very least you are having a chance to go back over and listen to the lecture and work out and configure your notes on screen where it should be done, rather than in the classroom where you should be trying to concentrate.

Panasonic is a great name in electronics. I've had great luck with my Panasonic Plain Paper Fax and they manufacture other sturdy and reliable electronics such as clock radios. Olympus is a quality name too. But I don't think they make a standard cassette transcriber, and I feel standard cassettes hold up better than fragile micro-cassettes.

Remember, a transcriber is essentially a recorder too. I keep mine by the television set to record any recipes with which I will transcribe later. Food Network rarely visually puts the recipes up on screen now, and it's easier for me to hit the record button on the transcriber than to program a VCR to instantly record a recipe or phone number that I don't want to miss, and then later transcribe it into my online recipe or phone book.