My Most Difficult Assignment

My hardest assignment came in the spring of my sophomore year of high school. I was in AP World History, a class I thought would prove interesting. Instead, I dreaded coming to class each and every day due to the slog of unbearable reading assignments and lengthy essays we wrote in class in preparation for the AP exam at the end of the year. This assignment was designed to be a cultural snapshot of a group of people in a Central American country revolting against their colonial overlords. I found myself overwhelmed not only with what I was supposed to do but how to accomplish it. I ended up writing a diary entry of a revolting slave in Haiti. I wrote from the perspective of someone desperate to live a life apart from his French owners and oppressive government. I tried my hardest to envision myself in the shoes of someone who never experienced independence and freedom. I let go of my fear and left myself in a quiet room to let my thoughts marinate. After I had imagined myself as a poor, desperate slave boy, I built up the courage to just sit down and write out all my raw emotions and dreams. I used historical language and context to build up the nature of the conflict between slaves and their conquistador masters. I completed the script, and then as a kicker for accuracy, I covered the paper in old coffee and burned the edges of the pages to make it a fully authentic product.
I learned a lot about myself during that project. Under the duress of this major project, I learned how to clam myself down when I had no confidence. I needed to put myself in the right state of mind to effectively complete the paper. I took the lessons from that paper to help me complete other large, intimidating assignments.