One of the key parts of my course is to learn Teeline shorthand, with hitting 120wpm after three years being the planned outcome. We shot through the theory in the textbook within a term and now it looks like we’re going to spend the next two-and-a-bit years drilling – repeating sentences over and over again until we get fast enough. I’m sure that it might have been useful a few years ago, but I just can’t see the relevance now.

I’ve sat in on a fair number of interviews and press conferences in my (limited) time in the field, and I’ve yet to see anyone actually using shorthand. I suppose that anyone involved in games is going to have some kind of affinity for technology and therefore might find shorthand irrelevant in the face of dictaphones and MP3 players with recording capabilities, but I still can’t imagine even the most grizzled veteran of the provincial press actually choosing to scrawl a transcription in favour of a little MiniDisc recorder.

I just can’t see why people conducting an interview would prefer to stick their face in a notebook while someone talks to the top of their head instead of talking into a little microphone. If you’re interviewing someone important it just seems rude and someone who wants their or their product’s name in print enough to call a press conference isn’t going to care either way. Maybe the point of it will come to me with time, but it certainly isn’t here yet.