
The Revolt of Class 2C
My name is Bill Walker and I’m a professional white man. Which is another way of saying I teach English in Asia. It was a pretty easy job until my eleven-year-old students decided to go on strike. Of course, they didn’t say they were on strike (I doubt they’d know the term even in Chinese), but it was effectively the same. What they really said was:
“No. Teacher, we will not.”
I teach English to Taiwanese students, not a group known for dissent. This kind of open refusal to do a teacher’s bidding is more or less unheard of. I liked this class, too. I was fond of almost all the thirteen kids in it. Eugene was one of my particular favourites. He had a nice gregarious energy and wasn’t dogged by chronic shyness like most of my students.
Now he stood at the front of his class, tall and gangly with a silly bowl cut and a determined look in his eyes, staring straight into mine. I’m not really the best teacher, so I did what I do in too many scenarios and tried to make fun of one of my students:
“Who is this ‘we,’ Eugene? Are you going to tell everyone what to do and what not to do? Now the whole class stops because you don’t want to practice for the performance?”
“No, Teacher, no one wants to do performance.”
“Well, I don’t want to do the performance either. If you don’t want to do it, take it up with Teacher Louise; she’s the boss here, not me. And besides, all your parents will be there. Do you want to fail in front of your mom and dad because you’re not ready?”
“Teacher,” Eugene said, “I don’t care. I don’t like the performance. No one like the performance. We will not do the performance. We all say this.”
“Yeah,” Misty added, “and no more homework or tests or song time or long grammar.”
“Yeah.” Everyone else in the class was joining in now. “We won’t do it!”
“Nothing!”
“No performance!”
“We will not do! We will not do!”
“Quiet!” I said emphatically, but not shouting. I never shout. One of my fellow teachers speculated that this is just because I don’t give enough of a shit, but really there’s nothing that makes me feel less in control than yelling at someone half my size. A lot of teachers here do it. Every native Taiwanese teacher I know will shout at the kids. I tried it once and made an eight-year-old boy bawl his eyes out for ten minutes without forcing him to behave any better. After that I decided raising my voice just wasn’t worth it. I’d rather try to reason with the kids.
“Look,” I said after waiting for everyone to quiet down. “How will you not do any homework or tests? Why even come to class then? I mean, if you don’t want to do any of those things then don’t come to English class at all. This is not your normal school. This is cram school. You don’t have to come here.”
“No. No!”
This was Misty speaking up. She was my other big favourite in the class. Unlike Eugene she was moody and withdrawn. She was also probably the best student in the class and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see a bit of myself in her morbid, slightly snide sense of humour. I suspected that if the kids had decided to organize this strike together then she was probably a major motivator, the think tank and strategist to Eugene’s grandstanding politician.
“We still do not have choice,” she continued.
“A choice,” I corrected.
“Okay, we still do not have a choice. If we say we do not want to go here, then Mom and Dad will make us go to another cram school. And then we will have to do the same thing there. I do not want to do so much homework and be yelled at and write things so many times. It is everywhere, but it is stupid and we will not do it now.”
“Yeah!” Peter shot back from the middle row. “We always have too much homework and writing. It is too much! Every day I have no time for play!”
“Yes!” Candy piped in from the back. “It is so much work for nothing. It is very, very stupid and so bad!”
“You guys can’t live in a world without work! You know that, right? You will always have to do something,” I said.
“But why we do performance?” Misty replied. “It is not learning. We just say the same thing again and again. It is boring and scary. We are so worried in front of our parents! Why not only talk in class and you say when we are wrong? And maybe some homework, but not too much?”
“Because the class isn’t structured like that,” I said. “I need to follow the formula. My whole job is to follow the way the class is laid out. I don’t decide what we do.”
“Why not?” Eugene shouted.
“Because Teacher Louise is the boss, not me. You have a problem with it, talk to her.”
“But she will just make us do performance,” Peter shouted, “and no one wants to do performance!”
“Yeah, why performance?” asked Joey from the back.
Jesus Christ, I thought, now even Joey’s in it with them. Joey was basically the class putz. He was a chubby kid edging off adorable and into overweight as his teens loomed ahead. I had to ban the other kids from using him in example sentences because they’d all make fun of him. He kept on showing up with bruises because he barely managed to stand up properly; he couldn’t walk in a straight line without toppling over and breaking into tears. If he had united with the rest of the class then I was really in trouble.
"I basically had no choice but to lead the class the way they wanted."
For the rest of the period I couldn’t get them to break. I threatened, I promised, I pleaded: nothing. They would still speak English with me, but they wouldn’t do anything else. After my time was over, Jessica, the Chinese teacher, showed up. Her hour with the kids is all about memorizing, reciting, and drilling grammar and vocab, exactly the kind of thing the kids were most dead set against. I let her know about the situation before she started her hour with them. She gave me a nasty, triumphant smirk as I told her. She figured she had me against the wall. I’d finally failed to control the class and now she could take over and outshine me.
I went downstairs and noticed that Louise was sitting at the computer, doing nothing as usual. She’d find out about this no matter what, so the best thing I could do was man up and break the news to her myself. After apprising her of the situation, she blinked up at me from behind her small oval glasses before issuing one of her patented non-solutions to classroom problems.
“Well, after Jessica talks to them in Chinese, maybe no more problem? And if Jessica cannot fix them, I will go and talk to them. And then no more problem! And we will make them do double homework for being bad today!”
“But what if they still won’t do anything?”
“No, no, it will be okay because I will talk to them. I think it will be okay tomorrow. Next class, no problem!”
Later, after my second class, I came back by the teachers’ tables and saw that the next class would apparently still be a problem. Jessica and Louise quickly halted their conversation in Chinese when they saw me walk over.
“Ah! Teacher Bill, we were waiting for you! So the 2C class still will not learn. I talked to them and Teacher Jessica talked to them but they will not do anything. They will not even practice for the performance!” Louise said, as if not practicing for the performance were the most scandalous thing imaginable.
“So what should I do for next class?”
“Well, all the class said they will not tell their parents, and I think maybe it is easier if we do not talk to the parents? We do not want to make them worry for no reason. So maybe I will say the kids can have more rewards? And we will be nicer? Try to tell them that next class! And maybe if that doesn’t work we can have you and Teacher Jessica teach the whole class together again. Maybe if you are both there you can together make them change their mind?”
“No, no,” I said. “Just give me a little time and I’m sure I can fix this in time for the performance.”
“Okay,” said Louise. “I think we can make them work again. You and Teacher Jessica will each talk to them in your own parts of the class! Right, Teacher Jessica?”
“Yes,” Jessica answered, looking at my head as if she were trying to test out deadly telekinetic powers upon it.
The next day at work I showed up the mandated twenty minutes before my first class, prepped my lesson plan and materials, and still had about ten minutes to spare when Rockwell, one of my fellow English teachers, showed up.
“Hey,” he asked me, “what’s going on with 2C? I heard the Chinese teachers talking about it, but they won’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Yeah,” I answered. “They’re on strike.”
“What?”
“They refuse to do anything.”
“They told you that in Chinese?”
“No, they’ll talk to me in English, but they won’t do any work or practice for the performance.”
“Dude, that’s awesome! This fucking performance is driving me crazy. And they’re still speaking English with you, so it’s like they’re still learning.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the rules of the class.”
“Who cares? All you do when we’re off work is bitch about all the stupid rules, and this performance is a huge pain in the ass. It’s not like you’ll get fired over this, especially if Jessica and Louise also can’t make them change. Why do you care?”
“Well, they do have too much work and the performance is total bullshit, but this isn’t going to help in the long run. I mean, when you get down to it they can’t change the whole system. I’m not the one cracking down on them or shouting at them or whacking their arms if they don’t pay attention, so why do this to me?”
“C’mon man,” Rockwell said. “You keep telling me how conformist you think Taiwanese society is, and now you’re complaining because your kids are rebelling against it.”
“But they’re not doing it right—that’s my problem. They’re taking it out on the one guy who’s on their side. It’s just not fair that they do this to me instead of their real teachers or parents.”
“So you don’t like it because it’s making your job harder,” he said.
“It’s not just that, but you’d be bitching too if it happened in your class. I swear, every time I think I understand Taiwanese people they pull some new shit and leave me back in the dark.”
“You tell your girlfriend about it?” he asked me.
“Yeah, I told her about it last night.”
“She give you any helpful perspective on it?”
“Not really. Mei asked me why it mattered because I always say this job’s such a joke and it’s impossible to get fired.”
“She’s right, isn’t she? I don’t really get why you’re complaining so much about the strike. If anything, it makes 2C easier. No homework, no grammar lessons to check, no making them practice the performance over and over . . .”
“Yeah, but it’s the principle. They’re like my favourite class, and now they’re disrespecting me. How does that make me look? Plus, it’s like a vindication for Jessica, and I know you hate her as much as me. If she or Louise can get them back to work and I can’t, then what happens? They’ll have the upper hand anytime we disagree.”
“Well, class is coming up soon. You got a plan?”
I certainly did not have a plan. Rockwell and I sat at our table by the door and watched the kids troop in from the surrounding schools of the comfortable neighbourhood we were in. Most of my students in 2C all attended the same public school and they came in like a school-uniformed Roman phalanx. They were talking emphatically to each other in Chinese and casting glances at the entire teaching staff. I tried to lean in to hear what they were saying but couldn’t catch any decipherable Chinese beyond “buyao! buyao!” Great. The only thing that I could tell was that they were repeating the word “no.”
They also went straight to class instead of loitering in the lobby with other kids or going to the computer room or running around the bathroom. They’re scouting the battlefield, I thought, getting into position before the enemy arrives. It occurred to me that I was the enemy in this scenario. I looked at the time and patiently waited until class started. I get paid for classroom hours and classroom hours only, so I wasn’t going to go to my class a minute early, not even in an extraordinary scenario like this. I still had to keep some of my principles.
I gathered up my books, lesson plans, and whiteboard markers before darting up the stairs. I was too anxious and curious about how the class would act to bother staging an entrance. I walked in to see them all seated, craning their heads to look at me as I walked through the door and up to my desk.
"They’re scouting the battlefield, I thought, getting into position before the enemy arrives. It occurred to me that I was the enemy in this scenario."
For once there was no side talking, no hushed last minute questions, cracks in Chinese or stifled laughter before the start of the class. They waited silently until I put my books down on my desk and then they all stood up in unison. We’d just spent two weeks trying and failing to get these kids to move in any kind of coordinated fashion for their dance in the performance and now they’d decided that they could move as a group after all.
Eugene spoke first. “Teacher! I am sorry but we will not practice for the performance today. And we will not write any homework or tests or grammar.”
“Or songs,” Misty added. These were always her least favourite part of class. They were mine, too.
“Listen,” I said, “you guys will be in big trouble if you don’t start working again. We all know this. I’m trying to help you. Just drop it now before it gets worse.”
“No!” The kids all said, first one and then the others in a short cascade of small voices.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. “I like you guys. Don’t I try to make this class easier on you?”
“Teacher,” Misty said, “it does not matter. It can be you or other person. It is still the same work. It is too much. Too much things do not help us with English but we do them anyway only because we have to.”
“What will your parents think? They work very hard to make money so you can go to this school and be smart. They will be very angry if you don’t do your homework so you can be smarter.”
“But teacher,” Eugene said, “if you tell them then you will also be in trouble because they will think you are the bad teacher. You and Teacher Louise and Teacher Jessica will all be in trouble.”
“Yeah,” Kitty said, “that is really why Teacher Louise says she does not want to tell our parents!”
“And we will tell them that maybe the homework will not make us so much smart,” said Peter.
“Smarter, Peter. So much smarter.”
I could correct them and they’d listen. But they wouldn’t do anything else. I’d never seen them act as such a cohesive unit before. No one was making fun of Joey. Candy and Angel weren’t off in their own little secret giggly world of two. Misty wasn’t sulking and glaring. Eugene wasn’t shouting at anyone. They were all focused on their strike, on working together to avoid their assigned work.
I basically had no choice but to lead the class the way they wanted. I’d ask questions and they’d answer. I would make them talk to me and they’d respond. Anything like that and they actually gave me their full attention, more than I was used to from any of my classes. But they wouldn’t do anything with writing. When I tried to make them practice for the performance, they wouldn’t stand up. They wouldn’t go over their lines. They wouldn’t talk about the performance at all. When I played the song they all started talking to each other rather than give a semblance of listening. No one had brought any homework for me to collect.
I gave up the next hour to Jessica, as scheduled. I figured she wouldn’t have any luck with them either. I walked by a little later and heard her shouting at them collectively.
“Do you want to go to the heaven or the hell?” she screeched at them. Amongst the many things I couldn’t stand about her was that her English was atrocious. Sometimes the kids would mock her for it behind her back, but sometimes she passed along her bad habits to them. This new bizarre threat of hers wasn’t helping her in my book either. I walked back by the classroom a little while later to see her whapping the students on the arms with a rolled up piece of paper as they refused to write anything.
I found myself talking to Louise downstairs. She mentioned how she was going to berate 2C again after class today. I asked about talking to the parents, but that was a last priority for her. Any sign of discord this strong could prevent the parents from re-enlisting their kids.
Part of the problem was that everyone could afford to send their kids to cram school in Taiwan. It would be unheard of not to send your kids to cram schools. For the cram schools, the parents were the real customers. And Louise would contort herself any which way to keep them. None of the kids ever wanted to do a performance, but their parents absolutely adored seeing their children dance around and recite English lines in costumes that would prove awfully embarrassing for them after a few years.
“Isn’t there anything you can think about to make them stop doing this?” Louise asked.
“Look,” I said, “I know I’ve been teaching here for two years, but it’s not like I was ever given any actual training. Nobody taught me what to do in this sort of scenario.”
“But we need to make them work again for the performance. If they do not, we could lose the whole class! Thirteen students gone. That is very, very bad.”
Two days later I had class 2C again and they stuck to their strike. We were fine until ten minutes in when I had to pressure them to do the writing exercises that were mandated in my lesson plan template for the day. It was actually their parents and their own society that had enforced this kind of order, not me. Yet I couldn’t tell them. Even if I did, they’d still glare at me and they’d probably respect me even less because I’d be revealing how little power I actually had, how I was nothing more than a symbolic white man fronting an Asian company’s curriculum and policies.
Once my time was over they were subjected to yet another group scolding from both Jessica and Louise. Afterward Jessica and I had one of our periodic talks about the class, which both of us had accepted as necessary despite our mutual antipathy. Today she was wearing a ruffled pink skirt that made her legs look like roughly cut poles. I thought to myself that she was the only girl in Taiwan without nice legs and yet she kept on showing too much of them. Jessica dressed herself the way an eight-year-old dressed dolls; she was a big fan of ruffles, frills, lace, and bows, usually placed somewhere haphazardly on her outfit.
“Teacher Bill, I think that the Teacher Louise will make us teach the class together now,” she said to me in a tone that was somehow both grave and breathless.
“Just ‘Teacher Louise,’ no ‘the,’” I said to her.
“What?”
“Never mind. So we’ll have to teach together?”
“Yes, we will have to do it after the next class.”
“So next class is what, Monday?”
“Yes, it is on Monday,” she said with obvious annoyance that I couldn’t quite be bothered to remember the exact class days.
“So that’ll be our last day of teaching like normal. I haven’t been able to change them. I’m guessing nothing worked for you either.”
“Yes, nothing works! They are very together right now. I do not know why.”
“I know what you mean. They’re really sticking to this.”
“Yes, all of them! Even Joey is with the whole class!”
“I know. And what happened to his face today, he fall off his bike or something?”
“Oh, no, he says he is bad so his dad hit him.”
“What?”
“Because he is bad, at home.”
“Did you do anything about it?”
“No, Joey is still just kid so maybe he is liar. And he says his dad does not mean to hurt him. I think it is just the light hit.”
“You can’t be serious. Has he told anyone else this?”
“Yes, probably. But please, this is not important. Just try to think about fixing for 2C.”
“Right, not important. Of course. I’ll see you after the weekend then.”
That Monday before class Louise told me that today would be the last chance to fix them. After that she’d take over the class herself, and after the performance Jessica and I would have to teach the class together. Louise was convinced that just by teaching the class herself she’d be able to make them start working again in time for the performance.
We waited for the kids as if preparing a line of defense. Louise stood inside the classroom at the head while Jessica and I both waited by the door as the kids came in. Eugene stopped when he saw me and came over. For a brief racing moment I entertained the hope that he might be coming over to announce an end to the standoff.
“Teacher,” he said, “is Teacher Louise going to yell at us again?”
“Yep,” I answered.
“Bogus!” he said. “Bogus” was the only American slang I’d successfully managed to imprint upon any of my classes.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Oh, Teacher, it is okay. I know you cannot do anything,” he answered before marching into the classroom while swinging his arms.
“Yes, we all know you cannot do a lot. Maybe you are too tired? I am so tired too, I must work so much!” Jessica said with a smile.
It was killing me how she thought she was smarter than me. How everyone here was apparently so open about what a figurehead I was. I watched Louise start to lay into them about what their parents would say, switching between English and Chinese. For a second I really thought Eugene was coming over alone so he could stop the strike or get out of it. Really, where did their unity even come from anyway? And then I knew what to do. I walked over and interrupted Teacher Louise to take Candy out.
I could see Angel, Candy’s equally stripper-named best friend, looking worried as I took Candy out alone. This was good. We came into the unused classroom across the hall and I shut the door and told her to sit down.
“Listen Candy, if you do not do your grammar work today, I will punish you. I do not care about the rest of the class. Only you. If Eugene does not do it, I do not care. If Misty does not do it, I do not care. But if you do not do it, I will punish you as hard as I can. I will call your parents and tell them that you do not do any work. I will not tell them about the other kids in class. Only you.”
“But Teacher, why me?” she asked.
“Well, if you want, I can punish Angel instead. So now if you do not do your work, I will punish Angel.”
“No! Teacher, I am okay. You can punish me and not Angel. But I will not do my work. Because no one will do the work.”
“No, Candy, one student will do his work. And once you see him do his work, you will start to do yours, too. Think about what it means if he can do his work and you cannot do yours.”
“No!” she insisted. “No one will work! They will not work!”
“Well, we’ll see,” I said as I ushered her back to the other classroom. I then called out Angel and gave her the same spiel, even offering to punish Candy instead. She didn’t offer to take back Candy’s place. I said that when I was talking to Candy I told her that if Angel didn’t work she would be punished, so Candy would know it was Angel’s fault. I sent Angel back and made sure she wasn’t sitting anywhere near Candy. Then I called in Peter, followed by Kitty. I told them that if anyone in class started writing they had to do the same or I would punish only them. Then I called out Joey. I’d been saving him for last.
“Look Joey,” I said calmly, “when we get to the grammar exercises after our class warm-up conversation, you are going to write them. And you are going to do the grammar exercises even if the rest of the class does not. If you do not do them, I will tell your parents. I will tell your dad. I will tell him that it is all your fault. I will tell him that you don’t do your work, that you cheat, that you steal from the other students and hit them. I will tell him that you are the only one in class that does not work. I will tell your dad that you are the worst in my class.”
“Uh?” he said, looking at me blankly with his mouth hanging stupidly agape.
“Did you hear me?” I asked quietly.
“I do not understand,” he said.
“I know you understand,” I said, switching into faulty but comprehensible Chinese, “you know that I will tell your father you are very, very bad. I will say it is your fault.”
It was one of the only times he’d ever seen me say anything in Chinese and he looked at me for a stunned second before he started blubbering. I cleaned him up and sent him back into class ahead of me. Then I started going through my lesson, with Louise and Jessica hovering curiously outside the door. We got through the warm-up conversation with no problem but when it was time for the grammar exercises the class wouldn’t do anything.
"Then I called out Joey. I’d been saving him for last."
With the class refusing to do their work, I looked straight at Joey and he looked at me. He was trembling. You could barely see the bruise on his face anymore. The whole class was now watching him. He got his pencil box with a shaking hand and dropped it, scattering pens, highlighters, and erasers across the floor. He stood up and collected them as quickly as he could. No one helped him. He put them all back except one pencil, which he kept in his hand and raised toward the exercise.
“No!” Eugene shouted at him. Misty seemed to be hissing. Joey brought his pencil down and started writing quickly and sloppily, vibrating in his chair as he filled out the lines. The entire class groaned. Eugene shouted again. Everyone was angry at Joey, and I turned my gaze to Angel. She paused and waited. No one was looking at her; they were still all focused on Joey. She broke and began to write stealthily and by the time the class realized she was writing I’d now focused on Candy, who also began to write. I thought she might have done it just to take the pressure off her friend, and I wondered if Angel would have bothered to do the same for her.
After that it was just a matter of time before the other students broke down. The smarter they were, the sooner they realized that they could now be punished as individual malfeasants instead of as members of a united bloc. I expected Peter or Kitty to go first, but Wilson actually started writing before them. Within the next two minutes, the only ones not writing were Eugene and Misty.
Eugene was too caught up in trying to get the other students to stop writing to start doing so himself.
“Why?” he shouted at them. “Why are you writing? Stop! Just stop and we can still make it better! Why are you writing now? What did Teacher Bill say? What did he say?”
No one was answering. They all kept writing, almost afraid to look at him.
“Wei shenme—” he started to say.
I cut him off with a curt, “No Chinese. One more time and I send you out of class.”
Eugene looked at me and looked at the class and looked at me again. His eyebrows were raised while the rest of his face slid downward. He focused on me with a beseeching, desperate, sad gaze before he stared down and started to write.
Misty was now the only one not writing. She stared ahead with her fists tight and her teeth pressed together. She was crying. The tears came quietly down her face, broken by the occasional furious sniffle. She wouldn’t do anything; she wouldn’t even look up.
The rest of the class proceeded sullenly, but proceeded. They did their work and took their assignments. The only one who wasn’t working was Misty. By the time Jessica took over she didn’t even have to yell at them. Downstairs, Louise was overjoyed. She asked me how I did it and I said I just talked to them one on one, as adults. After class I caught Eugene on the stairs.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said to him, “but you know the class had to work again. We couldn’t stop working. The world doesn’t work that way.”
“But Teacher,” he said, “why? I just wanted to make it better. I thought we can make it better.”
“Well, you can try,” I said, “and it’s okay that you did. I understand how you feel and I think it’s good, but you can’t change everything.”
“But Teacher, what did you say? What did you say to them?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Why did you say it to them and not to me? Why did you not say to me?”
“Eugene,” I said. “If I told you, I still couldn’t have made you stop. It doesn’t really matter.”
He watched me with his eyes growing sadder as I walked away. I stopped in the classroom and Misty was still there, hunched over and crying with her fists clenched. I took a seat that was too small for me next to her and looked over at her with what I hoped was a kind expression. She looked up at me.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I just can’t do it. I hate it. I don’t want to do the performance. I hate it. I can’t.”
“Well, now you have to.”
“But I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I get so . . . so nervous. I hate to do it.”
“But your family will be there. They want to see you do well!”
“But that makes me so scared. I just can’t and they will be mad. Or I think not angry but maybe sad because of me. Ah, disappointed! They will be disappointed and think I am bad. They want me to do so much.”
“What will they do? They will still love you. I mean, they don’t hit you, do they?”
“What?” she asked, startled by the very idea of my question. I regretted asking it immediately.
“No, Teacher.” she said. “Of course not! But they want me to do so much and I cannot. I hate it. I can’t! I hate it so much and they don’t care and you don’t care and Teacher Jessica doesn’t care. Everyone says I have to. But I hate it. I can’t do the performance. I can’t do all the school. It is too much. I can’t. I hate my school. I hate here. I can’t. And now they all go back to working and I also have to.”
“But you’re so smart,” I said. “You know I think you’re the smartest in the class. You can do the work so much more easily than the other kids. You always do so well.”
“I hate it,” she said. “Good or bad grades, it is stupid. I don’t know why I have to do things. My mom and my dad, they want me to do so much. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t.”
“That’s the world, Misty,” I said. “That’s just how it is. I’m not going to lie and say it’s good. It’s not good. But that’s the world you live in. And if you can’t do it now, it will only get worse when you’re older. Try taking a little break. It’s okay if you don’t do the homework tonight; I won’t tell anyone. And I’ll ask if I can get you a smaller role in the performance so you won’t be so nervous.”
She stared at me. The tears didn’t stop but I thought that I might have gotten through to her. I left the room and sat down at my table, not working, just thinking. I really did like both her and Eugene. I understood where they were coming from, but the way they’d betrayed me so personally with the strike couldn’t continue. I wondered if Misty was the first one to motivate the strike and if she’d really done it just because she was so scared about the performance. No way to know, I guess. I still felt good about both of them. I’d ended the strike and actually felt that my two favourites might come out better from the whole thing. It was a learning experience. And I didn’t even have to raise my voice.