I have had many memorable experiences and I have clearly learnt much from the the experiences of my life but I don't feel that this is what is meant by a leaning experience. Therefore, I will attempt this task from the premiss that learning was the intended goal of the event in question.
At school I was far more interested in sports than in academic study and as a result used to sit at the front of the class and score very low grades. I remember one week at the age of 13 or so I was in particular trouble with my English teacher for low marks and non submittal of homework. That week the class was asked to learn 10 lines from a rather long, 3 page poem called Matilda. Not uncommonly I had managed to forget to do my task and was somewhat anxious when the teacher asked the first student to stand up and recite their 10 lines. For the next 50 minutes or so I was furiously trying to memorise while one after another names but miraculously not my name were called out. Finally, with only 5 minutes of the class left the teacher said that there was not enough time for everyone and that she would ask for a volunteer to do the last recital and the rest would get an average grade. To everyones surprise I stood up and began to recite the whole poem from beginning to end, a feat that no one else in the class had come close to doing. I got the only A plus of my high-school life. I'm not sure what the moral to the story is but I didn't change my ways until I somehow woke up academically some 12 years later when I entered a university in Holland as a mature student.
The thing that brings this experience to mind is that I can still remember every line of the poem today. I forget about it for years at a time and then something like this assignment for example will trigger the memory and away I go.
At school I was far more interested in sports than in academic study and as a result used to sit at the front of the class and score very low grades. I remember one week at the age of 13 or so I was in particular trouble with my English teacher for low marks and non submittal of homework. That week the class was asked to learn 10 lines from a rather long, 3 page poem called Matilda. Not uncommonly I had managed to forget to do my task and was somewhat anxious when the teacher asked the first student to stand up and recite their 10 lines. For the next 50 minutes or so I was furiously trying to memorise while one after another names but miraculously not my name were called out. Finally, with only 5 minutes of the class left the teacher said that there was not enough time for everyone and that she would ask for a volunteer to do the last recital and the rest would get an average grade. To everyones surprise I stood up and began to recite the whole poem from beginning to end, a feat that no one else in the class had come close to doing. I got the only A plus of my high-school life. I'm not sure what the moral to the story is but I didn't change my ways until I somehow woke up academically some 12 years later when I entered a university in Holland as a mature student.
The thing that brings this experience to mind is that I can still remember every line of the poem today. I forget about it for years at a time and then something like this assignment for example will trigger the memory and away I go.
