Most Difficult Assignment

The most difficult assignment I have ever completed was in my senior year of high school for my Honors British Literature class. We had to read a book from the first/second century, and write a 10 page argumentative paper about what we thought the theme of the book was. The format was argument, quote, analysis, and we had to use at least three of them in the paper, but many of us used more than three.
The first thing was challenging about this assignment was the fact that the reading was from the first and second century, so the language was slightly difficult to grasp onto as easily as reading books from the 21st century. Once I got past that part, then came trying to pick out what the main theme of the book. After days of brainstorming, and prewriting, and drafts that should never see the light of day, I was finally able to pick a path for my paper that matched up with the ideas I was trying to get across. Another thing that was extremely challenging about this paper was that we got extra credit if we didn't use any verbs of being (am, is, are, were, was, be, been, and being). I tried to start out writing without using any, but my brain couldn't form that many sentences from scratch. To problem-solve this issue a bit, I ended up writing the paper without trying to keep all the verbs of being out. Instead I just wrote the whole thing as if I would write any other school paper, and then I went back through the paper, word searched for all the verbs of being, and then edited the sentences so that by the end of the paper I didn't have any. I found it much easier to accomplish this task by editing sentences than creating them.
Ironically, I struggle with argumentative writing. I think where my writing strengths lie, is in creative, personal, and informal writing. But that is why I am taking this rhetoric class, so that I can get better at writing in a more formal, argumentative style.
Even though it took me a long time to finish this assignment, I still didn't even get a good grade on it, so naturally I felt pretty bad about that. However, I was really proud that I got the extra credit for using 0 verbs of being, but I hope I never have to do that again.