Well, I Gotta Eat!! | The Reschool'd Podcast

Welcome to the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools

may have missed with your hosts, AJ Couttee and Jason Gordon. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show

We are the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools may not have prepared you for

As always, I'm AJ and sitting across from me, Jason. Jason, how are you doing today

Doing great, AJ. Today marks vacation week for summer, so about to go on vacation

Amen. I am right there with you. Yeah, where are you guys going

We are headed to the beach. All right. All right. And where are y'all headed? We are doing a national park. So we are going to the Midwest, going to hit up Glacier National Park

We are going in opposite directions. Oh, yeah. Just completely opposite directions

Some Gulf Coast beach time. Yeah, I don't even know how much Gulf Coast beach time I'm actually going to have just because of school

So our semester is finished for our teaching, at least next semester is finals, and I don't give a quote-unquote final

So they've already taken their last exam for me, and so I'm done. It's just grades now

So normally I would just be going to the beach and having fun because I have nothing to do. But now with the program, our semester doesn't end for the program for another three or four weeks

Your doctoral program? Yeah, so I'm still right in the middle of it

As a matter of fact, I've tried to get ahead with my normal weekly stuff for next week

so I can dedicate pretty much all week to writing this research paper that we have to write that I have not started on yet

Yeah, no need to procrastinate on that one. You better jump on that because that deadline's coming fast

yeah i i need to get on that and get ready for uh for all that because we got we got to do two

finals we got two final papers that we got to write so if i can get one done that'll be great

see everybody out there it's not just you guys who are suffering through papers and finals and

deadlines and everything even your professors still have those same deadlines coming at them so

Oh, God, yeah, it's awful. So what do you want to talk about today? Let's talk about something that, I mean, if you've seen the picture of me

you know I like it and it's food. We're going to be talking about meal plans, college meal plans

That's a good one. Does that sound good to you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a major consideration

You know, big money, a lot of other considerations in there too. So, yeah, let's do it

Before we do, though, remind everybody, you've got to visit our website, Reschooled with a D, not an E-D

reschool.com check out our most recent episodes check out the other stuff we're putting on social

media if you got any questions comments things you want us to talk about send us that of course

you can reach all our social media profiles from there and you'll see all the major podcasting app

or platforms where our show is listed so if you can find us there give us a bunch of stars tell

us how awesome we are and yeah that's that's that's that's all we ask of you oh yeah well

Well, Jason, it looks like you were actually pretty responsible with your food intake in college and in your professional career

Me, on the other hand, I could have stood to miss a meal or two. But quick question

How was the food at your alma mater? Oh, see, it was tough, man, because the food was amazing

I've mentioned before I went to the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina

And we had a partnership at the time with Johnson and Wales, which if you're familiar with that, it's, you know, that's where M.R. Agassi went

It was at a different campus, but, you know, it's a culinary arts school and they're amazing

So basically the chefs would come over and run these kind of kiosk in our food center

So we had all our normal, you know, cafeteria style food on the line, sandwiches, things like that you could have

Uh, but we had these little specialty things like every day we'd have these fancy wraps

or fancy salads and all this kind of stuff. So I lived it up

I'm not going to lie. The food was amazing, uh, during my time, but I don't know

What about you? Do you, uh, do you have solid food experience there in college

Y'all freaking had Michelin star chefs. Yeah. And ours looked like the Michelin man

Um, well, you never trust a skinny chef, right? Amen. Somebody who doesn't eat their own product, right

You never trust this. That is. And, you know, side, side remark

Did you know that the Michelin star for restaurants was made by the same company that was that makes Michelin tires

Well, it's so crazy. Counterintuitive. You would think. So, no, I. Well, one, I didn't spend a lot of time in the cafeteria, the dining hall, whatever you want to call it at my undergrad college, because one, I was living on campus for most of the time

I mean, off campus, excuse me. and two the food was atrocious um i yeah it was bad and i go back every year from my camp because

that's where they have it um that's where they hold it and every year we do we do um student

surveys at the end of camp about how do you like this what was you know what was your favorite part was your low part you know what you know rate the scale rate on the scale of one to five on this

speaker on this speaker on this activity and inevitably we always have the one that says rate

the food and it gets like a one. Um, and that's just because we don't go lower than a one. Uh

it's, it's, it's bad. Um, it's a small school and it's a very small school. So, I mean

they don't have the resources, I guess, um, that a bigger university would have

But did they run their own cafeteria or? No, they ran it out of, it was, it was outsourced to, uh, a couple of different things. I can't

remember what what the different ones were um sodexo maybe was one um but it wasn't like it

wasn't until after i left they actually got their first like fast food restaurant on campus

and that was a big deal right i mean all campuses on pretty much every college is bringing in that

whole airport model you get these little kiosk style restaurants on campus you know so you can

enjoy that well and to put it in perspective there's only one on our campus on that campus

Okay. So that does put it into perspective. That's kind of a good segue. We better go ahead and kind of define what is a meal plan and all that kind of stuff

Yeah. So a meal plan, the way we're talking about it, the meal plan, the way we're talking about it is it's a plan that you pay the school usually within tuition

It's usually attached to tuition. So you pay it on top of your tuition and all the other fees if you're living on campus or if you just want to voluntarily join the meal plan

where it allows you access to the dining hall and certain other amenities

Sometimes it comes with, like if you purchase the certain meal plan, it'll come with extra dollars used specifically for the fast food restaurants or different pieces, I guess you'd say, of the college for food-wise

So snacks and stuff like that you can use. But it's just, it's like access to an all-you-can-eat buffet at different times of the college, whatever their schedule is

for eating and stuff. And if you have most colleges, I don't know if this is true for you

Jason, but I would venture to say for almost all colleges, if you live in the dorm

you have to get one. You have to get some kind of meal plan. Which brings up a good point. So at least at my college and the different colleges I've been to

you had options. You had levels of meal plan. So you buy one and it may get you access where

Yeah it you know you can come in between a certain hours each day in the morning maybe 630 to nine o is breakfast And then you can get in in between nine and 1030 or 11 and then 11 like 1 or 1 30 is lunch and that type of thing so they break it out usually on that three meal a day type thing

and your meal plan it'll be passes right it's like tickets to get in and the idea behind it is if you

can make certain that students are going to be there that the food's paid for you can cook more

food in bulk type scenario. So it'll be a lower cost. Like anybody, at least in my college

anybody could go to the cafeteria. Anybody could go to the food hall and buy a pass to get in

But it was like buying a pass at a normal restaurant, seven, eight dollars for lunch

10, 12 dollars for dinnertime meals, breakfast. I can't remember is that cost. But basically

they were doing the math and saying, look, this is what it would cost to randomly feed people out

of the general public. And that included students, students, anybody could come in there. But if you

bought the meal plan, you got this great discount associated with it, right? Every meal, let's say

you bought 50 tickets or 50 accesses for the semester, right? So 10 week semester or 15 week

semester, you could, you know, let's say a 15 week semester and you bought 45 passes, you could go to

three meals a week. That would, that would be one of the lowest meal plans, right? But it would move

the cost rather than on average somewhere between $7 and $10 down to $4 or $5 per meal. So it would

save you money in the long run, but you had to buy it all together. And one cool thing about it

you could roll it into student loans or your scholarships if you had any would go towards

that and cover it type thing. So anyway, but they were all levels, right? There was a certain number

of meals. You could set it out by day. Some places have like, you know, you can go to two meals a day

and you choose the meal, you brought up an interesting thing. Some campuses have these general stores, right

that you could buy cereal and drinks and cold sandwiches and things like that

and you could use it there. Or if it had fast food restaurants, you know, things like that

So that was what our meal plan looked like in college. If you're in an inner city type thing where you have a lot of restaurants around you and stuff

Lots of times the school will enter into contractual relationships with local businesses around it and say you could even use your meal ticket, your, you know, your meal cards there towards their meals, towards certain types of food that they offered, you know, type things

So a meal plan was a little kind of a mix mash of all these benefits that you could get out of it

Right. So no school was going to be exactly the same. You really have to research your school and say, look, what am I really getting for this

Right. Yeah. I will say UGA, um, when I was in grad school, they had that thing, like you were saying

where they worked with other restaurants around the area, kind of downtown area

They had like these bulldog bucks that you can use those at the restaurants too

Uh, so that was kind of the benefit of if you were to get a meal plan, obviously the

bigger the meal plan, the more bulldog bucks you got on the other end too

So yeah, that's, that's another thing. Again, my undergrad did not have that

And, you know, that's a big deal. Like sometimes you don't want to go. You don't have time to go sit down for a meal, but you can run by the coffee shop and grab some kind of pastry and a coffee and keep on going and eat that while you're walking or some kind of burrito or something like that. Right

I'm a big breakfast burrito fan. I don't eat breakfast. I should, but I don't

Really? No breakfast? No, no. Well, I started – well, I started – I learned about that intermittent fasting thing, and I've been doing it for probably three years now

And I just – it doesn't help when you eat your weight and food during the time that you're supposed to be eating

It's still supposed to be eating less. But, you know, it's just one of those things I guess I've gotten the habit of doing it

Well, I have read a little bit about the health benefits, you know, teaching your body to not drop its blood sugar when you don't have a little bit of food, right

It keeps that blood sugar high even during times of, well, I don't have time to eat, right, type scenario

I've seen two studies, one that talks about the benefits of it

So like you're saying, the blood sugar, there's a lot of stuff about the joints, joint pains and stuff that's coming out from it

But then I also heard that it actually is no more of a benefit than just a traditional diet

So like if you choose this or you choose a traditional diet, it's not going to make you lose weight faster

It's still within that kind of dietary mindset. So it's just, you know, give and take

And like I said, I tried it and I think I just got in the habit of it. I don't even think about it anymore because it's not like I'm eating healthy during the times I'm supposed to be eating

Well, there you go. Now, you know, incremental steps for improving, right

So back to let's get back on the rails. So we just talked about meal plans

So the alternatives for meal plans. I mean, I think there's pretty much one alternative is you either get it or you don't

Yeah. Well, I would say this, you know, there are alternatives there in the plan you're going to get and how you use your meal plan

Of course. Yeah. I mean, the word plan is in there, right? Yeah. There's different levels

There's different levels that definitely you can get. But so, you know, I saw with my roommate in college, he used his in a completely different way than mine

But I don't know how let's let's give an example. How did you how did you use your meal plan

Well, I didn't have one. So I was the one that came in. I never had one

I just came in. And like you said, I bought those daily passes if I was ever going to eat with somebody or and this could be in that that the way you said

I don't know if this is what you're talking about when you said your your your roommate, the way he used it

But I was there was also times where I would come in and people would would let me use theirs because they had an extra or two

And so they would bring in friends. But again, our food wasn't great

It wasn't something that I was going to spend that much money on. I could get better food, maybe a little bit more expensive, but better food outside of campus

Right. And I lived at home. So. Oh, yeah. I mean, when you have that foundation, right, you got home meals and cooking and stuff

See, I didn't have that scenario. I was moved to another city. I didn't have anybody around me type scenario

So I was going to buy the meal plan just by virtue of I didn't have a kitchen

I didn't have anything I could cook in and buying food individually would have been very expensive

Yeah. Right. Even if you add up. See, I got the full meal plan my first year, which meant every single meal

I had three meals a day, plus, like you said, a few bucks additional that I could slide for snacks and stuff like that

Now, I will say this. It kept me from being part of the ordering pizzas at midnight. It kept me from, you know, because restaurants are expensive. I mean, it's just that simple. Like you start ordering out and doing, especially now with Uber and Uber Eats and, you know, some of the other fast food delivery stuff

Yeah. Yeah. Most of those were venture capital funded. You know, now that the VC funds have run out, basically they should be entering that maturity phase. Now they're no longer subsidized by these investment dollars. So all these fees are attached. It is ridiculously expensive now to eat Grubhub or Uber Eats or any of these others. I mean, what would otherwise be a eight to ten dollar meal if you went and got it and picked it up is turning into 20 to 25 dollars

with the delivery fees and the other services and everything like that

So actually, I see the model, the whole business model collapsing a little bit. But that being said, back to the whole meal plan thing

going into college, you're not sure what your schedule is. You're not sure about all these things

You don't know about your budget. You don't have money saved up for this purpose that you've got it dedicated for

So it's easier sometimes just to say, look, I know all my meals are covered

I know I can plan that way that I not going to go hungry that in between my classes I know the time period that I can do this that type of thing Right So I guess that what I like to talk about You know you big on planning uh you know strategy stuff I put honestly a strategy behind my eating plan I mean did you have a a eating plan strategy

in college? I mean, I, no, I was full or bored. I mean, when I was hungry or bored, which everyone

happen. Um, no, I, and that's probably one of the things like I even, even to this day

like I can, I know if I go back home to my, my parents' house to stay with them

like if I take the kids to them or whatever, uh, to spend a week with them, I eat more when I'm at

my parents' house than I do at my own house by far. It's not even close. Um, because usually when

I'm at, you know, at home with my family and that's it, it's, I, we have a plan for the week

this is what we're going to have for our meals for the week I plan everything out I go grocery

shopping on Saturday or Sunday or whatever get the food and then I just cook the the each night

what the meals that we had planned unless we go out to eat like we'll go out to eat like once maybe

a week or every two weeks or whatever but um but when I'm at my parents house because they have

that kind of old school mentality where you just buy a whole bunch of stuff and then you just kind

of figure out what you're going to eat you know if you have it if you need to run the store but

They have a lot of stuff that you can just snack on. And, man, I eat so much when I'm over there

It's, oh, God, it's awful. You know, I have the same thing

I don't really have a strategy. My mom keeps too much food around when I go back to the farm. You know, she's always got a lot of food cooked, a lot of things laying around

And, you know, the girls are always asking for something new. So there's just more and more food on top of food being brought out to, you know, satisfy the kids

So I guess in terms of what I was talking about, different ways of using the plan

your meal plan. You can think about it like this. It's a security thing. So you can look at it as a

security blanket that look, I got I got my meals covered. I'm not going to have to be short of

money and not be able to eat. So that's a certainty. There's also the thing of am I going to get up in

the morning and eat breakfast? If I know I'm not, then I need a lesser meal plan that I can use in

that way. So I won't be wasting that money. Or if I could somehow use my meal plan book somewhere

else just to grab coffee if you drink coffee or something like that. Right. So that'd be another way to use it

Some people got the meal plan just for their ability to use it at the fast food places

when they want to. And so instead of doing like a daily meal plan, you would do something just a certain

number of meals that you can buy during the week. And you honestly, hopefully you'd plan it and do the math and say, look, what is what

is my lifestyle going to look like? because there are other aspects that you consider, not just cost and timing, right

When it goes into planning, I mean, in your mind, what are, so cost and planning, we know

that, right? What's your schedule look like and how much is it going to cost you? But what are some other factors we need to think about

So, I mean, obviously, like you said, cost is gonna be the biggest one. And then, you know, the plan, the level of plan you have

So, so one of the strategies just to kind of hit on one of the points you're talking out. The strategies is, is I know at, I think at our school, I believe I, for some reason I was

looking at a plan or maybe it was my old school. I'm not sure, but like they said, okay, this plan

is you get three meals, uh, seven times or three meals, seven days a week. So essentially it's

every day of the semester, but then you can also do just a little lower one where you're saying

okay, I'm getting three meals, five days a week. And you're not doing essentially what you're

saying is not doing the weekends, which is good for some students, because if you're always going to go home on the weekends or you're going to go home on the majority of the weekends

then you don't need those meals. That's just an extra waste, extra cost that you don't need

And then if you are somebody who is, you also have a job and you're going to, you know

eat somewhere closer to your job, then you don't need that maybe a dinner or breakfast or whichever time that you're going to be doing that

Those are different level strategies. But the other considerations, I think, you know, one big one, and this is kind of where

it was more impactful to me because I didn't have one, but just the social aspect of it

Because I mean, that is where all the students come together that are on campus and you have

this just kind of social atmosphere where you get to meet people, hang out with people

socialize with people. It's also a great place to do study sessions. You meet with your group

If you have a group project or whatever, you meet with them during lunch or whatever. just a social aspect of it was was very important. And that's again, that's why I would go there and I would just pay for the separate meal is because I still want to be a part of that social aspect in certain areas or certain times of the semester

That's a great point. That's what I was actually going to bring up myself first

Like and that's how I think, you know, I saw a difference. So the very first semester I was in college, pretty much everybody around bought the same meal plan

And we all went to the cafeteria for lunch and dinner and we'd meet up and there was this social thing

It was an escape from the academic environment, right? It was escape from what you were doing

So you could sit around and talk and stuff like that. Some people would stay and study. Second semester, a bunch of those people that were in our group said, well, we're not using all our meal plan things

We'll just buy a certain number a week, which meant they weren't going to

So it broke up the social group. It interrupted this whole social calendar that we all kind of had and depended on

It was hugely disappointing for me, quite frankly, because that time that I enjoyed so much, you know, being from the South, you know, eating mealtime is a big thing, right

You plan meals as events. That's why we're so fat in the South, right

Most of us. Eating is just this huge, joyous event. Right? You know

and you put that kind of emphasis on it. Well, that carried over in college and that type of thing

So I guess that leads into my second point that I was thinking about, right

You brought up the first one, is you have to plan your health and, you know, mental health

physical health that goes along with eating, right? When you're in a stressful environment, food can be a crutch, right

People will eat more, right? They'll do things to replace or sometimes people go the opposite direction, don't eat at all

But it's actually more common, I think, for people to overeat or to abandon their healthy eating habits and things like that

So I did like most people. I put on the freshman 15 pounds because I was using food as, you know, an escape from, all right, I'm studying, I'm doing all this kind of stuff where I'm just going to go to the cafeteria and eat because that'll be a good break for a while

which when I was in high school back home and stuff, my breaks would be, well, I'm just going to go do something else for a while

I didn't need that constant form of distraction, that social environment to do that

I could go for a walk, go for a run. I loved to play tennis when I was growing up type scenario

which is funny. I didn't pick it up until I was about 15 years old. But when I started hitting at the public courts a little bit

it was just a great pastime for me. So I would go do that. Right. Type scenario. And but now, you know, I think people get into that cycle of the social aspect of it

They abandon their their normal eating habits that they had in high school. They don't have as much

And that causes them to put on weight. And that actually I saw it with so many people

It started affecting I couldn't sit in their physical health necessarily, but I could sit in their mental health

They started to lose self-esteem and things like that because they didn't feel like they were their healthy selves

Right. So I guess I know this is a kind of a turn away from, you know, our core thing, what we're talking about here, choosing a meal plan and all that kind of stuff

But you have to consider that. You have to consider how you're going to use the meal plan and how it's going to more deeply affect your life, not just cost and timing

but social aspects that we talked about first and then your health right Your mental health Are you prone to overeat Are you prone to make that too big a part of your life

And are you prone to suffer the consequences from it? Because it took me, honestly, a long time to understand how I was going to use this meal plan eating environment in not a healthy way

Ultimately, at the end of the year, I got into an exercise routine again. You know, I trained really hard for a summer and I lost that 15 pounds. Right. I'm I'm roughly the same weight I was in high school now because I figured it out. Right. Type thing. And no matter how much you exercise, you know, you're eating in your diet is going to be a huge part of, you know, whether you maintain what you see as a a healthy physical condition for yourself

You know, and I don't know. I heard this research project that was a while back. And essentially, anytime we make decisions, anytime we have to make decisions, we have to think about something. We have to come up with, you know, the pros and cons. But anytime we make a decision, whether it be small or big, we use this chemical in our brain

And essentially, and this is the most layman's term of this research study from what I can remember

they pretty much said that every day we have a certain amount of this chemical that we use or we can use throughout the day to make decisions

And any time we can automate things, it helps us because we don't have to make those decisions

We know that they're coming. And when you go to the cafeteria or food court or whatever your college has, it limits those decisions

You can get, like you said, the strategy of it. You don't have to make those decisions. You know what's going to be there on what days

You know what you're going to eat. And it makes those so that way you can kind of use that, I guess, the chemical is what they were talking about

I can't remember the technical name for it, but the chemical. You can use it for other critical thinking aspects of your life

That's why we tend to feel drained in the evening is because we have to use that chemical over the course of the day

And when you can automate it, like if you know what you're going to have for breakfast every single morning, whatever it may be, if you already have it planned out, then you don't have to use it for that decision

And so, yeah, I can definitely understand the dietary strategy, the dietary plan side of that

I got one more of another consideration. It kind of goes into the social aspect of it because that's where all the people are

But there's also, I mean, it can also stand on its own as well, is the convenience factor

I mean, the convenience, it's there on campus. If you're on campus, then you don't have to go anywhere

A lot of times it's within walking distances of the dorms or they have some kind of transit system that can get you there fairly quickly

And you don't have to get in your car. You don't have to spend the money to get gas, which gas, you don't want to do that right now

And you don't have to, like you said, you don't have to pay those extra fees if you're talking about Uber or DoorDash or anything like that, which, by the way, I've never used

Have you ever used either one of those Uber Eats or DoorDash? Yeah, I have

I mean, my wife uses them frequently. In the corporate environment, it makes sense, right

You're working. You don't have time, that type of thing. Sure. And so by virtue of that

But normally using them at home, no. I'm not a big order out food

I go to the grocery store. I cook every day. Yeah, me too. I love to cook. I love to meal plan, do all that kind of stuff. So no, I don't use them

Yeah, it's just I think it's just there's a convenience side of it. It is the same thing as it. And this is what I went through talking about convenience for my college is it's the same convenience you get from the social aspect of it, of living on campus versus living off campus

Because when a lot of the people that you are associated with, you hang out with, when they live on campus, when they're in the dorms, there's a lot of things that happen in the dorms

I mean, you have spur of the moment dorm parties or wherever you're at

And if you have to get a call and you live 10, 15, 20 minutes away from campus, then you're just you got to get ready, get going

And you don't have that convenience side. You don't have that ability to just say, hey, here I am

I'm here. or for like me, you know, I lived, like I said, I lived about 15, 20 minutes off campus and I was

playing soccer. Well, the guys who lived in the dorms, cause most of them lived in the dorms

uh, after practice, they would just run to the dorms, take a shower and they're ready to go. I had to run home, take a shower, get ready and then run back to get where they're at. And they

were already, you know, done. They were, they were already finished kind of getting ready and

already started whatever they were doing. So there is a large convenience side specifically for the

the meal side because it's just there. It's, it's, it's, you know, you don't have to do a lot of traveling or get. Um, so I

I do think that is, that is something to consider as well. So do you have any other ones

I would just say, let's just summarize it all together. So one cost, right

If, if you know you're going to use it, then it can be a cheaper alternative to flexibility of the plan

Choose the plan that allows you to do what you want to explore the plans really

well. You know, if you're going to use, you know, it at restaurants around check to make sure there

are options, right. And things like that. Three, the social aspect, understand that that's going

to be a big part of your social routine in life type thing for the health benefits and things like

that. Make certain you have a plan going in. So know your personality type, know whether you

you value the food or you have a tendency to overeat or things like that

Right. So you can plan out a healthy approach to it. So you're eating good foods and you're not over

you're not taking in more calories and you're burning out. So you're, you're, you know

putting on a lot of weight because we know that leads to, uh, you know

poor health consequences. It also leads to the mental aspect that we talk about the self-esteem aspect

uh, type thing. Uh, Women tend to be more heavily afflicted with men than men

You know, men put on weight and we're like, OK, whatever. Women, it's a sad scenario, but they tend to take it really hard and type things in terms of self-esteem, self-worth type thing

So understand that. And then lastly, just make sure it works in your life, in your schedule, because the convenience factor is everything

Right. You're there for a primary purpose, which means to grow as an individual

Now, part of that's the education you receive in the classroom. Part of it is the interaction with others that you receive as a person

Part of it is the extracurriculars that you take part in in college. And all of that, you know, the one thing we need is food and water

You know, I mean, we need sustenance to be able to do things. And that's really all food in a meal plan is

It's sustenance, but it's sustenance that has all these other aspects of social entertainment, fulfillment, those types of things

So if you can plan, if you can establish a routine, if you can understand yourself and how you tend to react to these things in different scenarios, you can make a plan and you can use the meal plan the way it should be used for you to help you grow as a person

Not in terms of like weight and size, but to support all else you're doing

Right. All the academic, all the social, all the extracurricular. it is a necessity that you can use as a tool or you can misuse it

Yep. Well, this has been fun. Much like talking about food and like I would eat food, I could do it all day

You got anything to say before we head out? Just remind everybody, hit us up on the social media channels, right

Let us know what you want to hear about because we are happy to talk about it. Awesome

Well, we hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, we hope to see you there. Goodbye. Take care

Thanks for listening to the Reschooled Podcast. Be sure to head over to Reschooled.com for news and other information on things we're getting into