Memorizing Dover Beach

     Dr. Preston assigned a poem for us to memorize a while back. He showed it to us on the projector, in which the majority of the class responded to with sighs of displeasure. I was one of these people.The poem was titled "Dover Beach" and as Dr. Preston scrolled down through the several stanzas, it seemed to appear even more difficult and tedious. "How on earth am I supposed to memorize all of this?" I thought quite miserably to myself. " I can barley remember the names of people I see everyday." Obviously, I wasn't very enthusiastic about our new assignment, and neither was the rest of my fellow students.
     Some of the class seemed to give up as soon as they saw the poem. Dr. Preston asked for people to come up and recite it, asking for volunteers and eventually picking people from our crowded classroom. Most refused to stand up and give it a try, others got through only a few lines before pausing to look at our teacher for a hint. The fear of humiliation drew me to try over and over at the poem. I cringed at the intimidating cluster of words, some of which I didn't even know how to pronounce. I read over the poem several times before realizing it did little but help with pronunciation. I tried over and over, but when I looked away, I couldn't remember anything. I knew I had to do something different.
     Instead of taking the whole poem all at once, I focused on one line at a time. I read the first line, repeating it in my head. Then, I closed my eyes and said it to myself until I knew for sure it was locked into place. After that, I read the first and second line, reciting them together. I continued this until I had memorized the whole stanza. I continued this separately with the rest of the poem, reciting each stanza individually. Pretty soon, I had the all of "Dover Beach" completely memorized. It took two days for me to say it fluently without stuttering.
    I found that if you look at something as a huge challenge, you might get too scared to even try. It's better to take things in small chunks. I finally understood the saying "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." I also learned from this that as we grow up, sometimes we loose some of our intellectual abilities. We don't have the same motivation to learn, because school makes it so complicated.
     When I was little, I could remember almost anything. I took part in plays and memorized whole songs after listening to them only a few times. I think all children start off like this. When we were kids, we wanted to know everything. So we let our curiosity lead us, and we experimented with life. We had all the passion and self-esteem in the world, and weren't afraid to make mistakes.This is because we knew that learning what doesn't work is just as important as learning what does. But as we grow up, we are taught that failure isn't an option. If we fail, we are punished and shunned. So people end up being so afraid of screwing up, that they hesitate at trying something difficult. We are molded to hide our curiosity and only try if we know we will succeed.
     I believe that is why so many people in my class were so unhappy about memorizing "Dover Beach". They didn't think they could do it. Society pushed them to think they shouldn't try, that it's too hard. This society needs to change. We need to encourage trial and error. We need to learn from our mistakes and celebrate our success.