October 26th, 2024 – What I Love About Being A Scopist

As of recently, I have been approached a lot by people who are sitting on the fence about getting into this industry. I’ve met a lot of interesting people from unique backgrounds looking for advice on how to get into scopistry or if it could be the right job for them. I’ve talked about these things specifically in two of my previous blog posts, ‘Is Being A Scopist A Good Fit For Me?’ and ‘How To Become A Successful Scopist In 2024.’

Those pages are still relevant and helpful, and if you’re at this point in your career, I suggest taking a look! But it occurred to me that I haven’t addressed specifically why I love scopistry. I’ve alluded to it, mentioned it, and hinted at it, but it hasn’t come up as its own post. I think with this being something I’m being asked about more regularly, it’s about time I talk about what it is that I love about this job and what I think other people would enjoy or do currently enjoy in this field as well!

Choose Your Own Hours

This one is at the top of the list for a reason. Life happens, things come up, and chasing your happiness doesn’t follow a regime and routine. We spend, on average, one-third of our lives at work. I don’t want to have so little control over what I do with one-third of my life.

Deadlines are where I shine. I like receiving work and being told that as long as it is handed in by a certain time on a certain day, then the schedule I keep is irrelevant. Sometimes, I am really in the zone with a transcript and I stay up late into the night working on it because I’m enjoying the work. I don’t want to be forced into a 6:00 a.m. meeting the next morning, because that takes all the enjoyment out of the work that I do.

One of the obvious perks of scopistry is that you’re free to keep your own schedule. If you’re a night owl, work nights. If you’re a morning person, work mornings. If you’re a split-shift kind of person, do it that way. You have the freedom to work as many hours as you want on the schedule that you want, as long as you’re handing in quality work within the deadline.

In this same vein, you take as much or as little work as you like and can handle. You decide what your limits are to submit quality work and stay within them.  

Work From Anywhere You’d Like

This job is entirely remote. As long as you have your software, hardware, a good internet connection, and good headphones, you can work from anywhere you’d like.

I get restless sitting in one place for a long time so I move around a lot. This means I go from the PC, to my laptop, to the living room furniture, my best friend’s house, etc. That way, I don’t have to choose. I can do this work from anywhere that I’m feeling comfortable at the time, and since I have my software downloaded on all of my devices, I can pick up where I left off on any of them.

Choose Your Own Rates

Within reason and to a certain extent, you also get to choose how much you charge for the work that you do. Mind you, you can choose to charge whatever rate you want, but if it’s not competitive, you’ll be passed over. For the most part, you can choose to work at whatever rate you want, and as long as your work reflects the rate you charge, you should have no problem finding reporters who are willing to pay for the services you provide.

This always suited me better than having a supervisor or anyone in upper management telling me what rate I received for the work I did. Gone are the days when we get asked to do more work for the same amount of money, work longer hours, and receive no recognition for our efforts just so we can help some nameless, faceless big brand reach their bottom line. No.

Choose Your Clients

One of the many perks of working for yourself is that you get to choose who you work with. There are a lot of court reporters out there with different styles of writing, different expectations, and different communication variations. Once you know more about yourself, your own style, and what you want out of these relationships, you have a better ability to gauge which reporters, and which styles fit best with your own. You can get some incredible long-term reporters that suit your style and that you can build a great rapport with.

Like-Minded and Helpful Community

I wrote about this earlier too, ‘Make Friends, Not Enemies.’ There is this discourse in freelance work that other people in your industry when you work freelance are immediately your enemy. Thankfully, I have not found that to be the case with scopistry.

There are a lot of places where you can reach out to the community of scopists and other similarly employed persons like proofreaders and transcriptionists. You can ask questions about the job, grammar, or vocabulary, even give a phonetic description of garbled audio and there might be people who can help you figure out what your subject said! People are helpful and kind in this community and I have become incredibly thankful for how welcoming this community of fellow scopists has been.

Interesting and Challenging Work

The work itself is honestly incredibly interesting and rewarding. I have learned so many things about the way in which the court system works, the specialties of the witnesses, and all of the crazy ways the English language can be used. My work is interesting, and I have found myself staying up late simply because the content has me so intrigued. This is unlike any job I have ever done before. I’ve enjoyed some of the work I’ve done in the past, but I never woke up excited to do the work I had to do. Not like I do now.

In Conclusion

Those are my thoughts on the matter. I truly love this work, and I find myself excited every day about the prospect of getting to do this job for the rest of my life. I’ve never been happier in my career than I am while running this business, doing scopistry, transcription, and proofreading work. People talk about, “If you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” I think this is about as close as I can get to that idea!

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did! If you liked this post or want to share your own experiences and tips, make sure to leave a comment down below. If you want to see more, check out the last post below or the previous posts on the blog. And if you’re interested in learning more scopist, proofreading, or transcription information, make sure to check back for a new post on the Next Step Scopist blog!

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