Overachieving

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 » general

Reading through this Ask MetaFilter thread about the rote memorization of pi, I'm reminded of being back in the third grade or so when everyone was given a choice of three poems to memorize. Of course everyone in the class chose the shortest one, which was probably four lines long. Being something of an overachiever at the time, I picked the one with three long, epic stanzas.

Later that week we had to recite our poems, which is the sort of thing I loathed doing. The entire rest of the class got up in groups of four and blurted out that same, short poem, over and over. It was horrifically boring after the second time, let alone the third or fourth. When I was the only one who stood up to recite the long poem, the teacher asked if anyone else had chosen that one. At that point I think some girl who had been absent when we first chose the poems said that she'd be willing the memorize the long one as well. So I wouldn't have to read the poem alone, the teacher decided to postpone the recital to another day.

Well, guess what? It never happened. I never had to read that poem.

I don't know what the moral of that story is.