Tanya

While working at not looking at the keyboard, work at not looking at the screen. One of the biggest problems is, when you make a mistake, you notice it on-screen and immediately look at the keyboard. You become frantic trying to remember where the key is, and even when the keyboard is covered you find yourself thinking about taking a peek at the keys instead of focusing on finding it through trial and error. Try to picture the keyboard in your mind and fill in the missing keys one by one.

Close your eyes, type a few COMMON words (cat, the, low, pie, flea, zero, quit), then see which letters you already know and where you need to improve.
Once you know where your weakness lies, work up from there with words that make great use of those letters: Keep losing the L? write about lollipops. The B? Write about bumblebees. Mixing up the G and H? Write about heights.
Memorize where the key is. “B is beside N and N is below J. J has a beveled line so I know how to find it.” Keep your eyes closed, focus on what you THINK is right, write a short line, and adjust on a new line (betty bought a bag of bumblebees from bob). If you find yourself writing a short line about nu,nlenees, re-write the same short line only this time reminding yourself to move to the left one key when you reach that awful B. Repeat it until you get it right, then choose a new line to write using the same letter. You’ll soon find you have a feeling for that key, and have magically learned all the ones around it at the same time. You know, those ones you kept accidentally pressing.

Most importantly, practice it frequently. Type your Google searches with your eyes closed, then re-type if you’ve made errors. Anything short, type it with your eyes closed. For a while your typing WILL slow down as you learn the keys, and yes you’ll likely start off typing gibberish, but in the long run you’ll find that your typing overall speeds up as you learn each new key until eventually you don’t need to bother with writing lines anymore.

It took me forever to finally up and get it done, but I can now comfortably use both programs.
I did two self-paced courses over two and a half months, combining the learning of Introductory to Advanced MS Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and FrontPage (Business Computer Applications 11 and Data Management 12). I also learned other junk, but it wasn’t included in the course, I just read them while waiting for my tests. We used the book A Guide to Microsoft Office 2000 Professional for Windows 98—it has a lot of broken-down practices that make learning pretty painless.
If you’re a self-starter, a good book with lots of practices will likely be enough. Others may want to look up courses at local education centres.

I like my doctor, he’s a great doctor, he gives a crap about my mental health. I could get well just having him in my corner. But, that’s the problem.
I like him so much I don’t visit his office when I need to. I feel like I’m making his life more difficult when a medication doesn’t work, so instead of going back after the medication runs out I just stop going.

So, as I see it, since persons with a mental illness are known to dislike their psychiatrists… If I get myself one I dislike, when the medication doesn’t work I won’t feel bad for making him do more work for me. All I want the psychiatrist for is to get myself on a working medication. And that’s all he wants to do with me.

Makes sense right?