Most Difficult Assignment

The most difficult assignment I have ever completed, or the most difficult time I had with an assignment, rather, was during my sophomore year in High School in American or World History, I don’t quite remember. I was assigned a half-quarter long research paper about a significant figure in American History, in my case, the world-renowned Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith. The paper was to have a minimum of 7 pages and required a minimum of 5 primary sources. While this assignment might seem relatively quaint compared to most of the larger assignments in university or even some of the later high school assignments, it was my first real research paper that required physical primary source hunting in the school library. I had never done something like this at the time, or at least to this scale, and, not fully understanding the significance of the task and the value of pre-planning at the time, I pushed off searching for primary sources to the last week the paper was due. This resulted in me scrambling in the school and public libraries to find enough sources in a week stuffed with assignments from various other classes. While researching for a general idea of who Adam Smith was wasn’t too arduous since his high stature in classic history makes him an easy Google search, the process of searching through the primary sources and taking out several direct quotes and references from each for use in the paper was especially daunting and time-consuming. Actually writing the paper was difficult as well, as my World History teacher asked for students to minimize the amount of biographical information and to maximize information regarding the historical figure’s significance/impact on history in an analytical format. This made reaching the word count exponentially harder as biographical information usually takes up a large bulk of the paper if allowed. I would constantly hit roadblocks while writing the paper, and as a sort of coping mechanism, would procrastinate for hours upon hours, which would lead to me rushing to complete half the paper half-awake on the day it was due. When turning my paper in, my teacher would point out that I had forgotten to point out my sources, and, in an act of kindness, would grant me a 1-day extension. I would end up getting a decent grade on the paper, but the road there certainly wasn’t seamless. The assignment was a wake-up call, teaching me that planning ahead for gathering research material is vital to maintaining a proper paper.