One Bite at a Time
Stephen was on campus（校园）to register when I first met him.
One summer day ____1____ I was headed over to the administration building, I heard someone call my name. I ____2____ around and saw Philip, one of my colleagues standing with another young man. As Philip introduced me to the young man, named Stephen, he reminded him that he would be taking one of my ____3____, Introduction to Literature. With a somewhat ____4____ expression, Stephen asked if my class was going to be “hard”. Would he be able to pass? I ____5____ he was concerned about failing before the ____6____ day of classes. We talked about what the class would ____7____ and I saw Stephen’s eyes getting big with ____8____.
Then I remembered a bit of classical dialog:
Question: “How do you eat an elephant?”
Answer: “One bite at a time.”
I told him to ____9____ his work that way. To do his assignment（作业）, all of them, and to get them in on time. I added that most ____10____ students I knew made a timetable of all the assignment so they could ____11____ their workload.
As time went on, I learned more of Stephen’s story. He had ____12____ in middle school. It had taken him longer to finish than most young people. Family members, including his mother, kept reminding him that he was a ____13____. Now, in the face of their negative-saying he had been admitted into college. He told me that before coming to our campus no one had believed he had much ____14____.
Stephen didn’t become an “A” student. He didn’t make any honor rolls. Still, he managed to ____15____ most of his courses by being in class every day, turning in all of his assignment on time and breaking down his studying into ____16____ digestible parts. By passing course after course he began to gain a measure of self-respect. He was a great singer and he was ____17____ the school’s cross-country team.
Every time I saw him on campus, he would brighten up and say, “One bite at a time.” Whenever he introduced me to his friends, he would tell them that he was ____18____ when he was supposed to be failing. His ____19____, he said, was that he was ____20____ what I taught him before classes ever started: “Take it one bite at a time.”