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Hi, everybody.

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My name's Morgan
Flanagan Folcarelli.

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And this summer, I
had the opportunity

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to work with New York Lawyers
For the Public Interest, which

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is a nonprofit law firm
based out of New York City.

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So first of all, to start off,
NYLPI has four main divisions.

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They have disability, justice,
environmental justice,

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health justice, and pro
bono clearing house section.

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And I was an intern at the
pro bono clearing house.

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So pro bono clearing
house works to source

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nonprofit organizations
and community

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organizations with legal aid
from the private bar for free.

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It's really a great opportunity.

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They do some really great work,
interact with a lot of really

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fantastic organizations.

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As the clearing house intern,
a lot of my responsibilities

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were administrative.

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So I was responsible
for emailing attorneys,

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and clients, and checking
in about how cases we placed

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were going, and
compiling weekly reports

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to take back to my team.

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And it was a really
fantastic experience,

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just because I
had not previously

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done this type of
work before, and it's

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something that is really
critical to any office

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scenario, whether it's
nonprofits or not.

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So I was very grateful
for that opportunity.

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But really, the highlight
of my internship

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was not the work that I was
doing, as much as observing

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the dynamics of my office.

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And I observed these
in three primary ways.

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One was the emphasis
on self care.

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And then second was the emphasis
on creating a positive office

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community, and the
third was the ability

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that the office provided to both
myself and my fellow interns,

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as well as everybody
who was employed there

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to have difficult
conversations, and really

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challenge each other,
and think about things.

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So in terms of
self-care, one thing

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that I'm sure any of you who
have worked in nonprofits

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or who have experienced
public service work

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will know that kind of plague
of the nonprofit sector

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is burnout.

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It's very challenging work.

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There are both, as my
[INAUDIBLE] have mentioned,

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really difficult cases, really
difficult stories you're

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hearing, as well
as just the fact

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that many of these
organizations are understaffed.

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There just aren't enough people
trying to solve these problems

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or to help others.

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So that can also lead to
really toxic work environments,

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even in some of
the nonprofits that

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are trying to do the best work.

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So these were things that I
had in the back of my mind,

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going into this
internship, thinking

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what I might be asked to do,
what that might be like for me

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as an intern.

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But my organization
really surprised me,

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in that I did not experience
many of these things I thought

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I would.

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At NYLPI, from our
first day, we were told,

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you have an hour lunch break.

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Take it.

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Don't sit at your desk.

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Go outside.

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Really have that
kind of separation

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from doing your work.

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Don't work through lunch.

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So many people in the
office ate together.

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The interns ended
up going to a park

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nearby to eat lunch, which
was a really wonderful thing.

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And that just is one
surprising instance.

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A second was that we
were told at 6:00 PM,

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they wanted us gone.

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They did not want
us working late.

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Really, if you had
something that you

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didn't finish that day, just
come back to it the next day.

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So it was a really positive
rhetoric about finishing work,

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and how you applied
yourself, and not

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biting off more
than you could chew.

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We were also really encouraged
to ask questions, which

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I think you generally
hear in an internship,

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but I found to be particularly
true in my internship,

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that the people that I spoke
to would often say, "Come back

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to me, if you have
any follow up,"

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and were very great about that.

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The second thing
that I really noticed

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was the emphasis on fostering
a positive community,

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because it really is
important to cultivate

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these positive relationships
in an office to both make it

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a safe and enjoyable
space to be in when

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you're doing challenging work.

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And so there are many
ways that this was done.

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There was a monthly
newsletter that came out,

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called The NYLPI Nibbler, which
was basically a satire piece.

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There were some mock interviews
of some of my colleagues.

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There were silly
little anecdotes.

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It was just a fun thing to
get in your office email.

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We also had an office picnic
and an office bake-off.

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So we had the day off
for the office picnic.

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It was hosted by the
director at his home.

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Everyone was invited.

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The bake-off was this
fun little competition

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that was held in the
middle of the day.

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I won two awards for
that. [INAUDIBLE].

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But it was just this
fun, lighthearted thing.

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And there were many instances
that these lighthearted moments

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[INAUDIBLE] talks into otherwise
very challenging, very draining

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work.

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We also had several happy
hours where at 4:00 PM,

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the office manager would come
on over the loudspeaker and say,

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"All right, everybody.

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Pack up your stuff.

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It's time to go," and we would
all just head out together.

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So there was this emphasis
on fostering community, which

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I thought was really fantastic.

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An additional dynamic that
I hadn't mentioned yet

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was that of gender.

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So my first day in
the office, I noticed

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that in this office of
about 30 plus people,

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there were only five to six men.

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The majority of my
colleagues were women,

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and all of the other
interns were women.

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And I was, at first,
surprised about this.

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But I ended up discovering that
that's a very common feature

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of public service work.

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It is a very much
women driven industry.

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And one of the
challenging things

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that ended up coming up in terms
of this and leading to this

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was the externship program
that my organization has.

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We bring in externs from
some of the big law offices

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to work for a couple of weeks.

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And we had one
extern in particular,

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who was a 30-year-old man,
who really just rubbed

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a lot of the people
in my office wrong,

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and illustrated to me
many of the misconceptions

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about public service work that
especially came out, in terms

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of my law student friends.

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He would ask
questions like, what

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big law firms did you apply to?

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And then was surprised to
find out that actually, they'd

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wanted to do public service
work, with the assumption

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that maybe they'd been
rejected from some of the firms

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that they'd applied to, because
there is this strong, really

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not accurate idea that people
who end up in public service

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are there because they don't
have the grades or the stamina

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to do big law.

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So that has its own
negative connotations

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about public service work,
and why you would be motivated

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to do that, and the importance.

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But it also has a lot of
really negative connotations

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about women, because
as women tend

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to fill these
positions more, there's

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this idea that
women's just aren't

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strong enough or smart
enough to do this big law,

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rather than just realizing that
this work needs to be done.

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A lot of people are
passionate about it.

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So I was able to have
conversations with my intern

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friend about how this
wasn't just an idea

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perpetuated by this extern.

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It was something that a lot
of them got at law school too.

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And I would have
had no clue, if I

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hadn't had these conversations,
wouldn't have been able to have

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this understanding of
many of the difficulties

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that one faces, especially
when you're planning

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to go into public
service work, and also

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being in the
environment that I was,

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where there was
a lot of emphasis

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on understanding
your own abilities,

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and also knowing that what
you're doing is important,

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and taking care of
yourself that we were

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able to have these
experiences with this extern,

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and to be confronted with
these misconceptions,

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but also rise above them and
realize that actually, this

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was an office full
of smart, passionate,

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driven women who did not need
a 30-something year old man

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to tell us that we weren't
smart enough to work in big law.

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So it was just an
incredible experience

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and really taught
me that there's

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a lot more behind the scenes,
other than just the work

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that you're doing that
goes into how you operate,

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that goes into what
you do and how you

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live as a person doing that.

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So I had not really
realized how important

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the office dynamic was,
until I had this internship.

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But I'm so grateful that I
was able to work with New York

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Lawyers of Public Interest,
and it's definitely

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inspired me to continue looking
at public service a lot.

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So thank you very much.