History According to Eleventh Graders

"They're Out There"

2010-06-24T11:13:00.001-07:00

The phone call I made to the ranger station at the South Platte District in the Pike and San Isabel National Forest was going rather well. She was very knowledgeable with regard to my questions about driving directions, trails and campsites. Then finally, the clencher. I asked about bears.

"They're out there."

Pause.

She was quite nonchalant about my question as if there was a black bear pouring a cup of coffee in the office and filling her in on local the local weather reports.

I would say that in the outdoorsy-ness meter I am above Chevy Chase in The Great Outdoors but below Grizzly Adams and Daniel Boone. I have some good backpacking equipment that I've acquired. I would consider myself a green person. I love the outdoors. I'm excited about this backpacking trip and if necessary, will kill zombies (see last post). But my uneasiness about bears started to creep in while reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods his account of hiking the Appalachian Trail. The thought of coming across a black bear in Colorado hadn't even crossed my mind. But as Bryson rattled off statistics (from the mid-1990s) I began to wonder if this was something I should be concerned about.

There are several cardinal bear survival rules I think every North American is aware of. One, you cannot outrun a bear so don't even try. This counteracts everything in my fight or flight response. Clearly fighting is out (although on a trailhead marker near Boulder this was given as a last resort) Two, bears can climb trees, at least black ones can so that is out. And three, never come between a mama bear and her cubs. But is that it? Are there others? "Make myself look bigger than I already am"? "Bang pots and pans"? Let's stop right here.

If I am a bear and you start banging pots and pans at me you've already shown you do not have a worthy weapon, I will now charge you. Second, your empty pots and pans show me you've already eaten and are therefore fatter and heartier as a human meal.

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Bear attacks are extremely rare and there are certain things one may do to reduce the risk of encounter. Obviously steaks and barbecue are not on the menu. I do not suppose a black bear will risk exposure for some Easy Mac and leftover trail mix. And bears also are aware of human presence before humans are aware of them. According to artofmanliness.com, bears often bluff when confronting humans and making a lot of noise DOES cause them to lose interest. According to the same website, fighting back is also a legitimate reponse, albeit a last-ditch effort to save one's life:

"Aim your blows on the bears face- particularly the eyes and snout. When a black bear sees that their victim is willing to fight to the death, they’ll usually just give up."

"Once the bear is done tossing (emphasis and large font mine) you around and leaves, continue to play dead."

The most outrageous bit of information I've heard about bear attacks is to not just play dead, but LET the bear drag you back to it's den (most likely the scruff or your NECK) then wait for the bear to leave and calmly dust yourself off and make your escape.

Finally, consider this: you are more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a bear. Unless your name is Rick Oliver. Oliver, a North Carolina man, was struck by lightning in 2006 AND mauled by a bear just this week. He survived the ordeal.

Luckily the forecast for this weekend calls for clear skies.

Mountain Time

2010-06-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

I used to hate on REI all the time. I mean seriously, I don't remember Lewis and Clark needing $400 Gore-tex to cross the Continental Divide. It was 1805 and I'm sure they found a few bear skins or beaver hides to keep themselves warm (check that historical fact). I used to see REI as an over-priced warehouse of outdoor goods that were in excess of what an outdoors person would actually need.

I love the outdoors. But ultimately you're just going outside. Do I really need saddle bags for my Shih Tzu on the trail? (He would make it only a few feet.) But that's when I visited the REI "mothership" in Denver and saw the outdoor experience through fresh eyes. As you can see from the pic above, the store is inside a MASSIVE (warehouse?) that is actually a national historic landmark. This thing is massive. There's an indoor rock-climbing apparatus to my left.

I have been backpacking and spent much more time outdoors since I first started my REI smear campaign. And I will admit right here that I was wrong. So why the change in attitude?

Zombies.

I saw REI as a training ground and equipment warehouse should a war with zombies ever break out. One, I'm already at an altitude of over a mile above sea level. And as my best friend Bill will tell you, the best place to find refuge during a zombie attack/war is the mountains. Zombies are less tolerant of the cold and the mountains are the safest place to find refuge. So the geography is already taken care of. So then I saw the REI warehouse as my first stop in the event of a worldwide zombie war.

There's all kinds of indispensable equipment that might seem over-the-top for your everyday mountain and climbing needs. But in the event of a zombie invasion they would be absolute necessities; sleeping bags that can sustain a person well below freezing thus enabling the fleeing human to climb to higher altitudes. Top-of-the-line alpine skis for an emergency evacuation during a surprise zombie attack.

Now for weapons. There are no firearms at REI. I mean come on, this is a place that prides itself on the conservation of our natural world. But there are plenty of other suitable weapons beyond shells and gunpowder that would prove effective in the upcoming zombie war. And as Bill would point out, blades don't need to be reloaded. I didn't find any machetes at REI. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places. But I did start to look at typical outdoor equipment in a new light. For example, take the ice pick. At first glance you might think this the top pick to mount an offensive against zombies.

You would be wrong.

Your zombie opponent would simply pull you closer in as you struggled to free your ice pick from his zombie guts. Now take the wooden paddles in the kayaking department. Lightweight and smooth coming in at around $90, this blunt weapon would prove itself indispensable during a close-quarter melee attack.

My outlook on outdoor equipment has changed. I was wrong several years ago when I chided friends about buying such high-tech expensive outdoor equipment. They were simply a few steps ahead of the rest of us.

How to Not Go (Completely) Insane This Summer

2010-06-09T08:11:00.030-07:00

This post is for my teacher colleagues out there trying to figure out what to during their first full week of summer vacation. Usually in casual conversation we educators have about five minutes of "teacher talk" before our friends shutdown and get bored. But this post is written directly to my fellow soldiers who spend nine months out of the year in the trenches pouring themselves out and then have a brief two-and-a-half months (if that) to regroup.

So I present in no particular order a list of my Seven Ways to Not Go (Completely) Insane as a Teacher This Summer:

1. Find a routine. The most important thing I've learned these past three summers is routine. You must have a routine as a teacher in the summer. Shower and shave before 9:00. At least get out of bed before 8:00. Keep a cup of coffee brewing at all times. For me I wear khaki pants during the off months. It makes me feel somewhat professional at the house. Which leads me to number two:

2. Leave the house. It is crucial to leave your house or apartment at some point during the day. It could be to the library (my personal favorite), the bookstore, coffee shop. Whatever. Just get out of the house before 11:00. It tells yourself you're important, that you have somewhere to be. Even if it's just to pick up the mail or pay rent.

3. Read. This probably should be number one. It's the only surefire way of not mentally atrophying during the summer. Keep reading during the summer. Or for me it's starting TO read. This past year I had absolutely no time to read outside of school. Now that summer has started I have no idea where to begin. There are so many history books I want to pick up. I started with The Mental Floss History of the World.

I think it's also important to pick up a book about teaching. And I don't mean those dense professional development books you were supposed to read during the year. Ones that tackled vague concepts like "school culture" and "understanding poverty." No doubt important, but you want to read material with actual techniques to improve your teaching for the next year. I'm currently reading Teach Like a Champion 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. This is a great read. It's full of useful "do this, don't do this" techniques with minimal fluff. I've learned more in the first three chapters than all the trainings I've been to combined.

4. Kill Facebook. This one may not be as important as the rest but I know that Facebook can be as addicting as meth. Okay maybe not meth but it certainly can eat up a lot of your precious summer hours. I think Twitter is the way to go. You can follow all sorts of teachers and educating professionals to get ideas in the summer. I once read that Facebook is all the people you went to high school with and Twitter is all the people you WISH you went to high school with.

5. Avoid summer trainings like the Bubonic Plague. At least until the second week of August. If one of my colleagues is reading this, and you know who you are, you need to take a break.

We're being PAID for the next two months to take a pause from this past year. I'm all for advancing my professional career but when you shorten your break from two months to two weeks you're in danger of burnout.

6. Don't check your school e-mail account (too often). I think a good rule of thumb is to check your school e-mail about as often as you fill up your car. Administrators pretty much work all year-round. They do want to keep us informed about what's going on at school or within the district. But unless my classroom's burning down or everyone scored fives on their AP U.S. History exam, it can afford to wait a few days.

7. Write. I used to think that if I wasn't signing books at Barnes and Noble I wasn't a writer. That is completely bogus. If Sarah Palin can "go rogue" then I'm Bill Shakespeare. Writing is the best way I know to process and decompress after a tough school year. And for me it's this blog that I've managed to somehow periodically update once an election cycle. But even if I'm the only one who ever reads this, I still say "write on."

Readicide

2010-05-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

I wish I had coined the term for this entry. Sadly I did not. But it's a very poignant word. There are many types of "cides." Genocide, the killing of a people. Homocide, the killing of another person and even regicide, the killing of a king (I only know that from Age of Empires II). Readicide, by all accounts, must be the killing of reading or books. As high school teachers we have a pretty good record of this. For the most part we tout the classics in literature as great reads but secretly haven't read them ourselves. I know that I've assigned hundreds of pages out of The American Pageant for my AP U.S. History kids, the very same book I skipped through some ten years ago in the very same class. Lots of students get burned out on The Iliad and Moby Dick before their reading palettes ever become fully developed.

This became clear to me this past week during TAKS testing. I was assigned to a room of sophomores, many of whom I don't teach. One of them asked me where I taught English in the building. I responded with, well I actually teach history. She turned her head and replied, "Then how come you like books?"

Wow.

I said some of my favorite reads are history books. "Textbooks?" she asked me. "Of course not", I replied. "Textbooks are dry, boring and sterile." I think this prompted a look of great confusion on her face. Like I had just violated some covenant made among high school teachers. That the books we teach from are sacred texts never to be openly criticized. I defended my textbook during the early part of this year. It was my first go at teaching AP U.S. History. The last time I cracked that brick was January. I don't want to assign my kids things they can't highlight and make notes on or draw on.

On some level I'm guilty of readicide. Sometimes I assign long passages of text just because that's all I know what to do. I've already begun planning for next year. Shorter passages. More primary sources.

I think as long as kids are reading SOMETHING I'll be happy. Perhaps it's John Grisham and not John Steinback. Or Percy Jackson instead of Andrew Jackson. Either way there's a book in their hands.

Cesar Packs a Punch!

2010-03-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this blog since last fall but I thought this would be a good post to kick it off with again.

Last week one of my hardest working students earned the right to pie me in the face. Students (actually my boss) had been putting money in my jar to raise money for Haiti. After the "pot was pumped" I was in third place and therefore the video below was my fate:

This blog sucks

2010-01-29T12:59:00.001-08:00

Ten Things I Hate About Reading

2009-08-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

Teachers assign us books that are boring and long
Instead of novels about wizards named Harry, Hermoine and Ron

Textbooks are heavy, they're dry and outdated
When the best history comes from movies, R-rated

Most authors can't write as you'll see by page ten
Only to find their home back on the shelf again

I never finish my books from August to May
'Cause I am grading your papers every freaking day

The library by my house smells like old people and cheese
And they never have my book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Books are too long and movies are better
'Cause actors follow the text down to the letter

Reading takes work, dedication and most of all time
Which is totally the opposite of Call of Duty Five

Books make you think and question your rights
But CNN and Fox will tell me what's right

Internet is faster more than anything I could ever read
And Wikipedia can supply me with everything I could need

And finally the last reason I'm done with the book:
My cursor is stuck, eternally on Facebook

APUSH will be your downfall

2009-08-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

I'm firing up this blog again to use for the new school year!!! Why am I so excited?!? Because it's going to be ridiculously hard!!!

How many of you asked me in the Spring, "Mister, will you recommend me for AP?" Wow, if you only knew what you were asking. Anyways, this is where you can find all the info for the course as well as assignments.

Also feel free to use the comments section to ask permission to get out.

The Reset Button

2009-03-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I counted to a thousand once. I think it took me ten minutes or so. I can sort of imagine how much a million dollars is. But I once heard that it for a billion seconds to tick by it would take 32 years. Thirty-two years. I realize I only teach history but lately I’ve been trying my hand at some economics. So, I pulled some numbers off the Internet just to see how big those numbers really are keeping in mind the federal bailout package is near that amount give or take a few hundred million dollars:

“The treasury could give every man, woman and child in the country $3,272.57. For football fans, one trillion dollars would pay every pro player’s salary for the next 313 years. A stack of 100 dollar bills worth one trillion dollars would rise to 789 miles. The deficit is at a record high of $1.2 trillion. The national debt is at $10.6 trillion. That stack of 100 dollar bills would reach upward to 8,000 miles high.”
-Random Internet guy

With that in mind, would if we just started over? Honestly think about it for a second. What if everyone kept everything they had but they owed NOTHING. Clean slate. Everyone starting from scratch. No threat of foreclosures or credit card. Everything back to zero. Hit the reset button.

Our financial system is in such dire straits it seems to me the only solution is to hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE. Whenever I have too many programs running on my notebook and it locks up, I restart the thing. Sure that could fry the computer, but I give that a 1% chance of happening. And granted when you’re playing with the national economy, a 1% chance of screwing up is a big deal. But think about this: The federal government gave the insurance giant $85 billion dollars in loans to keep the “entire system” from collapsing. Whatever that means. Remember that is 2,720 years worth of seconds. One dollar going all the way back to Aristotle’s day in Ancient Greece. What happened to all of that cash from the federal bailout late last year? They blew it. Now AIG is now asking Congress to approve additional loans in the amount of $65 billion where some analysts are thinking the total amount could reach $180 billion. So in seconds terms that’s one dollar for every second going back to before the Bronze Age ended in 1200 BCE.

Oh and wait. This is your money. Yours and my tax dollars are going to plug a sinking cruise ship headed for a huge iceberg that may or may not be there. “We just can’t let it collapse,” say the experts “it’s just tied to too much of the global infrastructure.” Remember playing the original Nintendo game system and all of the sudden it started to glitch? The picture was moving all kids of ways and you couldn’t even make out what level you were on? Every kid knew to take out the game cartridge and blow on it. It didn’t make sense to keep playing until MAYBE, just MAYBE the game corrected itself.

All we hear is terrible, terrible news about the economy these days. Job loss numbers. The DOW sinks another 4%. Here’s something you might not know. The Dow Jones Industrial is an average of 30 of the biggest stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. There are over 10,000 publicly traded companies on the NYSE. That single number, whether it be 14,372 or 6,427 is what causes so much angst and confusion about what to do next.

So maybe resetting everything back to zero is a little drastic. But so is ushering billions of dollars of our money out the door with relatively little oversight. Everyday is a new number. If we ran our checkbooks and bank accounts like Congress did, we would default on our mortgages before the movers could get the first plasma television through the front door.

Here’s the last sobering figure for this post:

Let’s say we have a plan to pay off our national debt of around $11 trillion dollars by paying $1 every second. And since I’m feeling optimistic, let’s imagine that the U.S. government actually manages a balanced budget for the next, oh, 20 centuries. How many years would it be before our national debt was paid off?

It would be the year 348,568 CE.

Okay, so that amount of time is beyond comprehension. Let’s imagine the government has a little more weekend money and can afford to pay off the national debt at a rate of $1 million a second. How long would that take?

We’d be debt free by Tuesday.

Why I Should Be Treasury Secretary

2009-02-13T05:43:00.000-08:00

I understand that I am a lowly high school teacher that makes about 1/8 of what the United States Treasury Secretary makes. But that doesn't mean I can't come up with ingenius ideas to stimulate the economy. Let me explain...

As I was listening to NPR on way to work this morning I heard that President Obama has lost another nominee for Commerce Secretary. I realize the title of this blog entry is why I should be Treasury Secretary but Commerce is a good start. As an Obama supporter I hate seeing his nominees for his cabinet positions keep dropping like flies, even if they didn't pay their taxes on time. I do my taxes early every year. I was like the fourth person this year to file. But this morning's newest dropout was a Republican Senator who had disagreements with the Obama Administration's economic policies. Fair enough. He has an already cush job in the Senate. Let me take that job and I swear I'll be the next Treasury Secretary before the mid-term elections. Here is the idea I had this morning...

In case you don't already know, our economy is in the toilet. Banks aren't lending. People aren't spending. There are job cut announcements every other day. One way the Bush Administration tried to stimulate the economy last year, and I imagine Obama will attempt the same, was to give everyone a "stimulus check" to go out and blow on something in hopes of kickstarting consumer spending. But most logical people are going to use that money to pay down debt on a car or mortgage before they buy a remote control submarine or a truckload of fireworks. So how can we get Americans to start spending again without giving them cash? The answer to that is...gift cards.

We give them and get them every year for Christmas so why doesn't the government issue them instead of stimulus checks? Gift cards are great because you can't cash them in and they can only be spent at the designated retailer. Here's how it would work: you would go online to a government secure website, fill out a profile and pick about ten different "stimulus cards" you would prefer to have Uncle Sam fill up for you. It could be anything from a Target card to a Chevron card. Let's say everyone gets $500 to divy up. You could put all of it on a Chili's card or an AMC card or whatever. The government even gives you a 10% increase if you promise to gamble it away. There would be no room to save money. The government is forcing you to blow it on something you would probably buy anyways. It was your money to begin with in the first place.

But what's actually happening is people are starting to live within their means. And to Wall Street this is a revolutionary concept. The American people are going on a spending diet. Right after World War II Americans were saving 10% of their income and putting 40 to 50% down payments on houses. The last I heard Americans were saving -2% of their income. I don't know how you save something you don't have. Even if Americans had government-issued giftcards it wouldn't solve our problem. These new spending behaviors could be habit-forming which in the short term is bad for our consumption-based economy. But think of the U.S. economy as the pathetic overweight boxer who wants to get back in the ring at age 54. We're going to have to get a lot leaner and meaner if we're going to compete. That means not making so many cars that people don't want to buy and only watching T.V. on a 27 inch screen instead of a 104 inch one.

I've been tightening my wallet over the past month or so. No more cable television; I can watch TV shows online. Less Starbucks; I can brew my own cup of Joe. Only watching movies that qualify as "ripe" on rottentomatoes.com. Only paying for things in pennies, stuff like that. It will ad up, bit by bit. Someday we'll be out of the toilet and with change to spare.

The Day Facebook Almost Killed Me

2008-08-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

The website Facebook almost killed me the other day. But before I go into any more detail I should explain how this social networking site you're probably reading this on almost caused my death.

During our first day of in-services this week all of the teachers were grouped into their respective generations. All R.L. Turner teachers were grouped into either Baby Boomers, Gen X-ers, or Millenials. Now would be a good time to tell you that large groups of teachers are worse than their students. We talk and text when we're supposed to be attentive. In fact, I'm writing this blog while I'm supposed to be paying attention during a training session.

But back to the generation gaps. Like I said there were three groups at Turner and we were talking about the challenges of teaching the Millenials, my generation, in the 21st century. These were students (and teachers) born between 1982 and the present. Our alleged characteristics are that we are ambitious, goal-driven, and that we are tech saavy. I don't know about the first two but I definitely put myself in the third category. It's true. Our technological gadgets are extentsions of our bodies. Phone calls, e-mails, texting. We are masters of the digital age.

Take the iPhone for example. I caved in and bought this magnificient machine. It is incredible. Capable of great and terrible things. The entire digital world is at my fingertips anytime and most anywhere. Even during our teacher trainings I'm just like the students I teach. Checking my e-mail. Updating my Facebook status. Checking the U.S. medal count or the flooding conditions in Togo. I'm already checked out before the PowerPoint presentation begins...

Now let's take a look at the ultimate escapee of the digital Pandora's Box: Facebook. I like to compare this modern monster to the advent of nuclear weapons. After the Summer of 1945 the world would never be the same. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are testaments to the power of the atomic bomb. The nuclear monster was out of the cage. Countries who didn't have the bomb wanted it and those who did couldn't see themselves as safe and prosperous without it.

Have you ever known someone who deactivated their Facebook account? They're usually tagging photos in a matter of days. Don't misunderstand me. Facebook can be used for good. You can keep up with people you'd rather keep at arm's length or hit on girls without actually having to talk to them. But it's dark side can be deadly.

When the iPhone met Facebook it was like splitting the first atom. Here is my story: One afternoon I was on Facebook chatting with a friend and decided to move the conversation to my iPhone. Oh yeah, while I was driving. Now driving is an act that should require 100% of your attention. However, I was CHATTING WHILE DRIVING. Not texting. But CHATTING. So this probably split my attention span in half. But I was wearing a seatbelt. So here I am driving in North Dallas, in the rain by the way, not texting but chatting on my phone. I look up suddenly, which is a good thing to do when you're driving. And there's the back end of a Honda Civic staring at me. Now there was no accident but as I threw my phone down into the floorboard and slammed on the brakes, I sobered up. What am I doing? Has my actual reality been overtaken by this Facebook monster like a virus? Do I really need to be telling my 424 friends my "status" with some sort of clever quip? Or how about tagging every person that's been in a photo with me since second grade?

If I've become a Facebook junkie, tracking people's lives and leaving comments on their walls, I wonder about those I teach. This experience has made me want to go off the grid for a while. Maybe for a week. But it's as if we think if we're gone for a second, just one second, we'll miss something crucial in our lives. Like maybe Sen. Clinton will reveal she's really a man. Or maybe the President will apologize for something.

Maybe I need to wander off somewhere for a while. You know, tube the creek to White Rock Lake or explore the inner city without telling anybody. Would you be okay if you didn't know that I finished a book? Or that I'm a fan of The Toadies?

I may ween myself off for a while. Not permanently but just enough to bring some much needed reality back into my life. But if I don't update my profile pic for a week, call the cops. I'm probably dead.

History According to Tenth Graders

2008-08-13T09:52:00.001-07:00

These last few days of summer have blown past faster than a Michael Phelps butterfly stroke. True there are a handful of days left before school starts but they really don't count. Work starts with a slow trickle at the end of July, not with a fullblown fire hydrant blast at the end of August. As far as I'm concerned, when the last fireworks display trickles out on the Fourth of July, Summer is over.

So here I am back at the school for year two. Except this time teaching sophomores World History. It's funny what a teacher collects over the Summer. I found a few things in my drawer that I decided to post on my bulletin board. The relevant New Yorker cartoons that only I think are funny. My Onion article about problem Senators who are placed on a seating chart at the capitol. Then there's the letter from a student accusing me of being a fascist. I relish that one.

I also think of my successes and failures from last year. Only a handful of my 11th graders didn't pass the state's high-stakes standardized TAKS test. But yet I forgot about the miscommunication that led one young scholar to believe Harriet Tubman, the famed leader of the Underground Railroad, was responsible for the decision to drop the atomic bomb over Japan. Or how in 1917 when the United States entered World War I, F-18 fighter jets strafed and attacked German U-boats in the Atlantic. If my failures outweighed the successess I think I had then I don't think I would be returning for a second year. It's no secret, our school has a high turnover rate of teachers. There are always a handful of newbies who come in. Some are coaches who once they realize our athletics program doesn't have quite the organizational capability as Steinbrenner's Yankees, leave for another district. Academics before athletics. I stand by that.

So the wax in the cafeteria is just drying and teachers are starting to file in, one by one, dazed and confused as to how two and a half months can be over so quickly. Like I said, mine flew past and now it's time to dust off my collared shirts and wrinkled khakis. In less than two weeks this classroom will be filled with 50 sophomores who good chance don't remember much about social studies over the Summer. That's okay. I forgot how to teach. So we can meet halfway somewhere.

I plan on updating this blog a lot more now that I'll be more stressed out with less time on my hands. Feel free to comment. I've been out of the blogosphere for too long.

History According to Eleventh Graders

2007-12-09T18:58:00.000-08:00

I use to write a blog way back in the day. It was about working in a strange place where no one knew your name and no one spoke your language. They also gave you dumb looks and didn't pay any attention to you when you spoke to them. They made you laugh and feel good inside but they also made you wonder why you ever got into this line of work in the first place. And here I find myself in that almost exact same place two years later.

Ever since I became a history teacher I realized the parallels between this and my previous assignment in the Peace Corps are strikingly similar. So I thought I would try to document my experiences teaching U.S. History to 11th graders in Carrollton, TX. But this time, I would try to tell the story from their experience. One of the reasons I wanted to teach high school was because I had an absolute blast. High school was way better than college. College was all business to me, just get my degree and get out. But high school...high school. Enough said.

So I will present American history the way they perceive and the way they respond to it. I only wish I had thought of this sooner. The comedic gold is simply brilliant and some of the commentary so dead-on, sometimes I wonder why they needed me in the first place.