My boyfriend and I are both court reporting students at the same school. I recently completed the program and am waiting for my state test results. My boyfriend is at 170, and he's extremely frustrated because he's been there almost a year. He feels that he's not going to progress anytime soon.
Although I know that the last thing he wants to do is drop out, he keeps telling me that he's thinking of doing so, because he's so frustrated. He does not practice, and he knows that the fact that he doesn't practice is probably contributing to this; but he told me that he lacks motivation, and that there's a ton of other stuff he'd rather do with his time than practice.
I totally understand where he's coming from. I stopped practicing at one point in the higher speeds, because I was getting burned out to the point where I hated school. Once I stopped practicing I started to enjoy school more than I did when I was spending every moment of my spare time on the machine. Because I know where he's coming from from personal experience, I'm not going to tell him that he needs to give up his spare moments to practice (though I did strongly suggest that he practice when he first gets to school, rather than reading in his car or hanging out in the breakroom).
I really want to encourage him, but I don't know how. I've already shared with him stories of the moments I had been frustrated in the program, and what I did to overcome them. I offered to give him some of the practice materials that I used when I practiced. I even offerred to give him a hug or buy him a drink on the nights he comes home frustrated. Nothing seems to work!
Does anybody else have any ideas of words or actions that I can use to encourage him? He's getting depressed over this, and I don't want him to be depressed!