Effective use of evidence was talked about a lot in class. One of the first things taught was Barclay’s formula for setting up multiple quotes in a paragraph. One of the most important things about the formula was the “payload” part which emphasized on explaining why you are using the two quotes together in conversation while also elaborating on your own ideas in relation to the ideas convey in the evidence. For example, in my project 3 paper I tied together a classmate’s narrative with a narrative about the flu pandemic, “Both narratives talk about how in spite of going through a pandemic they managed in the end to come out as better people. It was only after they had gone through that arduous part in their lives that they could look back and reflect on themselves and realize how better off they are now than they were before. I believe that the reason we look back on these events and can see how we managed to persevere through them is because they happen so infrequently in our lives”.  In the payload section I explain how the two quotes I used are related to one another and then I transition to how they support my ideas. Barclay’s formula really helped me with explaining the quotations I use while not just summarizing what was said in the quotation. It helped me learn to segway from the quotes meaning to how it relates to the thesis of the paper.

Another skill I learned with using evidence in my writing is providing context when leading up to a quotation. This was a skill I struggled with at the beginning of the course but now I can say that I am able to provide ample context for the quotations I use. For example, “Aidan Fontaine, a college student, recalls the things he lost at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Fontaine says, “Then it slowly started to dawn on me how bad it actually was going to be. First, we were not allowed to play in our hockey championship, then we couldn’t go into school and had ZOOM classes, and worst of all the high school social life was gone, completely stripped from us” (Fontaine)”. In this excerpt I lead into my quote by explaining who the author is and provide some context behind the circumstances of the quote. This allows the reader to not be confused as to why I added the quote to my paper as it will transition smoothly from one sentence to the other which will build up more meaning and information that will support my reasoning.