The goal of this three day exemplar from Student Achievement Partner web resources is to give students the opportunity to use reading and writing habits to absorb deep lessons from Charles Hirshberg's recollections of his mother. By reading and rereading the passage closely and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussions about the text, students will identify how much his mother's struggles and accomplishments meant to both Hirshberg and the wider world. When combined with writing about the passage, and possibly pairing this exemplar study with Richard Feynman's memoir "The Making of a Scientist," students will discover how much they can learn from this mixed genre memoir/biography about what inspires life choices.