How I Determine Mastery (with a Scripture Memory project)

I recently wrapped up memorizing the book of Romans! It's still a bit surreal that I actually completed it! As I've mentioned before, my main method for memorizing is through song. Over the course of 2021, I found/adapted/wrote songs for each verse in Romans (well, except for Romans 16:24, which doesn't exist in the ESV although Romans 16:25 does).  Along the way, I was reviewing the verses via BibleMemory.com, but it took me about a month to review the verses enough to be able to recite them with confidence.

Different people claim "mastery" in different ways. I have a friend who would consider a book "done" when he could recite it with 2 or fewer mistakes. Through my extended memory projects, I tend to declare mastery after I have completed these three things:

• "mastered" all the verses through the BibleMemory.com website/app. This is usually the first step, since I master the verses as I'm learning them. For smaller projects like Titus, I would review all the verses in one sitting (and I use the setting where I only type the first letter of each word and have to reach at least 90% accuracy). For Romans, though, I didn't try to type it all at once.
• written all the verses from memory. I'm not sure why I decided to start doing this years ago. I may have been inspired by the stories of Christians whose only Bible is a handwritten one. It does help to catch smaller mistakes like endings of words.  I go back with a different color pen to make corrections. I would've definitely gotten hand cramps if I tried to do it all in one sitting, but I kept track of the time it took, out of my own curiosity (and if you're curious, too, it took me 5 1/2 hours over the course of 7 days).   
• recited the verses to an audience. I don't necessarily allot myself a number of mistakes, and some recitations have been smoother than others. For my first book (Philippians), I recited the whole book during an elementary chapel service at the school where I taught. I cued up someone to follow along to help prompt me if I needed it. I did this for my next three projects. Titus was the first book I memorized while not teaching at a Christian school. It was also at the height of the pandemic, so I recited it on Facebook Live. And then I recited Romans in entirety to my mom in my final days of practicing, to the backyard West Virginia wildlife on a short family getaway, and then to whomever tuned in on YouTube Live. 

Thus, I consider Romans "done."  These three steps are not required for anyone else, of course, but it's just my test for myself to determine if I've achieved mastery. I will continue to review Romans on BibleMemory.com, but I need a better system for reviewing the book in regular intervals. I don't want to lose it!