1.

I came up with this statement by evaluating the different topics and chose the one that I
thought was easiest to find evidence for. I then thought about what perseverance lead to
in Gantos’ book, which was success. This message is more important to some people
than others. To people who struggle to be motivated, they should apply this thematic
statement so that they can know that the outcome of persevering will be very rewarding.
I will use this message whenever I’m feeling discouraged, unmotivated, and lazy so that I
can motivate myself to persevere and work hard for the success that awaits at the end.
2. I used different processes such as searching through the book to find a good quote,
looking back on previous assignments where I used evidence, and the most helpful,
using the shared document we did on part 3. The shared document was by far the
easiest process because everything was already there and well organized, so it was very
easy to find. Searching through the book was hard because it took up a lot of time, and I
had to think about if a certain quote was good to use for the topic. As for improving on
evidence searching, I can bookmark certain pages that have good quotes in them while
I’m reading so that I can come back to it when I need it for the quick write.
3. The only one I used was tone because it was the only one I was able to find and think of
an explanation for. I’m sure I could’ve used the other two, repetition and word choice, if I
thought of an explanation about it before tone. I would say that word choice could be the
hardest because I didn’t really see any significant words that stuck out to me in the
evidence I found. I think one great way I can improve is to experiment more than just the
tone of the evidence and more with the repetitions the evidence might mention or that
might be in the context. I should also experiment with word choice so that I can get
comfortable explaining all three different types of analysis and get a good variety out of
it.
4. I thought that I was able to connect the evidence back to the thematic statement pretty
well, but is often the part that I worry about the most in a quick write. I’m sure it would be
a bit confusing if they didn’t understand the general plot of the book, but overall, they
could probably understand the connections I wrote. I sometimes couldn’t rely on just the
quote itself to fully explain and connect to the thematic statement. I occasionally had to
state what might have been happening in the context. I also used the existence of the
book “Hole in My Life” as evidence for success since the author Gantos is the main
character in his story.
5. I feel that I grew in my ability to explain evidence and connect it. It also provided me a
good chance to practice using different vocabulary. Specifically explaining the tone and
connecting the evidence to the thematic statement helped me get some practice in to
explain and analyze things better. Doing quick writes for a while will help me to be more
confident and do better in future quick writes.