Why James White Sparked a Buddy the Elf Controversy and Insights into Evangelism

Opening Banter and the Buddy the Elf Joke

A super lively discussion about evangelism and Buddy the Elf? Yes, that's coming your way on this episode of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving Fraternity and the Christian Podcast Community.

We're here to give you Biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life. This episode, well, I was on the Caleb Gordon podcast with a good friend of mine, Chris Hanholds from Voice of Reason Radio.

We got into some fun, lively discussion at the beginning, just kind of having a little bit of fun at Chris Hanholds's, well, at Chris Hanholds. And so, but then we, you know, he likes to dress up as Captain America and he loves Buddy the Elf.

Or not, you can listen. But how did James White create a nightmare for Chris? Well, we got into that. We also got into talking about things like evangelism and more serious things at the end. So I hope that you enjoy this episode of The Wrap.

Report. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community.

For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to.

Strivingforeternity .org. Chris and Andrew, however you want to do this. Here's what I want to do, just a quick 30 ,000 foot view, who you are and what you do. Chris, I'll start with you.

My name is Chris Hanholds. I am a retired law enforcement officer now working in private security. I've spent a number of years, eight years, having done a podcast by the name of Voice and Radio. I'm currently on hiatus because my podcast partner, Richard Story, has had a lot of family issues that have come up.

So we've kind of just taken a break from everything while he and his family take their priority in taking care of those things. I do some blogging on our website, slavedotheking .com. And that's pretty much me in a nutshell.

I'm a father of two now adult sons, married for 23 years, and not too exciting after that.

Awesome. Very cool. And then, Andrew.

He is being way too humble because there are, listen, there are kids across his area in children's hospitals that are thrilled when he comes in the room. I'm just saying...

I understand that happened once, only once.

Well, then you have to explain. I leave it to you to explain.

Okay. One of the things my family and I have done and enjoy to do is go to comic book conventions. And we have, you know, we've, we've dressed up and I've done a variety of suits, primarily Captain America.

I have been involved with at least one charity group. We did go to one event at a hospital. We have also, you know, appeared when there was a kind of a walk slash run event for raising money for a young boy who sadly died from a disorder.

They were raising money to help that for a foundation to help find cures for that and a couple other events like that. So we have done that occasionally, not too much these days. Our boys are grown now.

One is living out of state and the other one, he enjoys coming with us, but he doesn't dress up so much. So we don't do it as much as we used.

To. So that's okay. So that's why your Facebook has a Captain America. I did not know you dressed.

Up and did comic con Captain America stuff. So he even did. What was it softball that you did.

Dressed as Captain America? No, it was, it was a dodgeball event. Daredevil a suit, which in the middle of summer in a, in a heavy cloth outfit is a really bad swampy. It's very swampy, especially when you're old and out of shape and you look like, now you look like Santa wearing spandex when you don't realize how bad you look or you look like buddy of the elf.

Well, that one you'll never know because I'm not doing that.

You're never going to do buddy the elf ever. You're never going to have anything to do with.

Buddy the elf. Nope. That, Hey, you can play. I know you say this is the music. I wouldn't have.

A clue. I've never watched the movie. Never will. I just, I mean, it's sad that you're not going to, you're not going to do anything here. I mean, no, no. So, okay. So this is how we were starting the conversation.

Is it James White's fault that it's James White's fault. It's James White fault,.

But Andrew jumped on board and just took it to levels unknown. So this is now, this has got to be about three or four years ago now, um, where I, somewhere along the line, James White started following me and some other people that I knew just cause he wanted to find some more people interact with, I guess.

And he seemed to enjoy, well, I think he got tired of all the crazy people flooding his account. So he followed you. He did. By comparison, think about it. Think about me versus the people he has to deal with.

I mean, so it was around this time a few years ago where the, a meme was going around. It said, Hey, you know, out of these nine movies, you have to pick three and the rest go bye-bye. And they were all Christmas movies.

And there was a trick, there was a trend of picking elf. Well, I don't like Will Ferrell. He only plays one character,.

Will Ferrell. And that's what, that's what he does. Him and Adam Sandler. Yeah, that's all he.

Does. I mean, well, Adam Sandler can play some movies that are not stupid. He actually has more range, you know, it's not a big range, but it's a range. She and Pooh is better. Like I said, not a huge range, but, uh, so I just don't care for him and I had no interest in watching it.

So I jokingly said, here's a, here's an unpopular take. I've never watched elf. I don't want to watch elf. And I probably will never watch elf. That got James White's attention real fast. And, and the next thing I knew he was threatening to expose me on his show as a Grinch.

How dare you not like this show? Hey, you like Mandalorian, the guy that directs Mandalorian directed this, you need to watch this. I'm like, I don't want to watch it. And for next thing he did not, he didn't just threaten.

He actually did. Oh yeah. He, he, he hounded me from his own show. So I ended up with followers because of this, which I still do not understand. Hey,.

Bad news is bad. Press is better than no press at all. Well, it's, it's really embarrassing.

When you show up at G3 for your first time and people walk up to you and go, I know you elf,.

Right? So it just got crazy. A little history. Do you know who they originally were going to cast in? No, I have. No, why would I know? Chris Farley was originally going to be elf.

Well, who's Chris Farley? Again, I wouldn't know.

But so, wow. Okay. So, so Andrew doesn't know who Chris Farley is. No, I'm pop,.

I'm pop culture illiterate. I watched elf. Very much so. I watched elf only because Chris.

Wouldn't. Okay. You need to understand Andrew's involvement in this. So yes, I need to know this. My own podcast partner betrayed me and he gave James White my address. And for my birthday, um, it's, you can kind of see it up above me up here.

There's a buddy, the elf pull string doll right about there. Yes. Yes. It was sent to me because my, my podcast partner betrayed me and gave him my address and told him my birthday was coming up,.

Which is, that's what you gave me. You tried to publish his address on my Facebook account. Yeah.

No, that's why I was like, don't you dare. So I know why now this is realms unknown of weird to the point that I actually deleted my account for about five days. Um, and this is all Andrew's fault. So I jokingly said, now Andrew has had a habit of sending me gifts.

Very generous. He'll never tell him or he'll, he won't tell me or he'll tease that something's coming, but he'll be very quiet and be very sneaky about it. So I jokingly said on the show and Andrew took the greatest offense.

Why? I have no idea. Um, that, that James white a little bit outdid him only because he made it an internet thing and went after me and was in, in, in hounding me about this, where Andrew doesn't do that.

He tends to be more sneaky. So thank you, Andrew. I now have, um, somewhere in the, in the garage, two six foot standees of buddy, the elf. I have, I have a mug. I have a noisemaker. I, somebody, this was during COVID.

Somebody sent me a face mask with buddy, the elf on it. That's fantastic. I ended up with more garbage that I never wanted to see involving buddy the elf. As you can see, Andrew's turning purple over his ears.

He's laughing. And this was all Andrew's fault. It actually got so bad that I actually had to beg people to stop because I had, I am, I don't mind a joke, but I tend to be a fairly serious person.

And so, well, you've got a criminal justice background. Of course, right.

I'm 25 years, law enforcement retired now. Um, and so when I go on the internet and I'm trying to post stuff and trying to share stuff, I'm getting bombarded. I mean, I could not go online without having, you know, being dogpiled about this.

I couldn't go to my, my, my mailbox. I was terrified to open my mailbox. I'm not kidding. And at one point Andrew was hounding me enough and I had gotten so frustrated. I said, knock it off or I'm deleting my account.

And he dared me and I did, I shut down my account. I was done. Well, this is, I mean,.

And now we've, we've taken the first 10 minutes of the podcast about buddy. Well,.

This was how this podcast started, right? So, so it is technically how we started. It is because you, you put record and we just started talking about, well, no, you, you, you posted something about buddy the elf and I tagged Chris and said, he would love this.

And you actually took that serious cause he didn't know Chris. And I thought it was serious. And yeah, yeah, no, I, so, so, um, so I am Andrew Rappaport and so folks realize, but, uh, all of this, the intro, Andrew, Andrew,.

What do you do? Tell me about your life, besides harassing Chris at every opportunity. I like to.

Harass Chris at every opportunity. And, and I, look, he, he said that James White outdid me. I cannot be outdone by James White. It's just, so I made sure that I, and I told Chris, I wasn't going to stop till he admitted that I did better than James White.

I succeeded. Better as a relative term. Well, depending on your perspective. So, uh, yeah, so I'm, I'm with a ministry called Striving for Eternity Ministries. For the most part, we're very serious, unless Chris is involved.

I'm saying that and Caleb is going, look, I hung out with you at Fight, Laugh, Feast, and yeah, I, I know you're a jokester.

He's a practical jokester, which that's immediately why I thought we should be friends.

Continue.

Yeah, so I do, I do a couple podcasts. Uh, my, the two that I mostly do is Andrew Rappaport's Rappaport, which is basically biblical interpretations, applications for the Christian life, and then a live stream on Thursday nights at Eastern time, which is called Apologetics Live, and you just go to ApologeticsLive .com, and I can, I tell people every week I can answer any question they have about God in the Bible, and if they doubt me, come on in the show, ask me their hardest question.

The thing that most people struggle with is they don't realize that I don't know is actually an answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Surprise. I'm not afraid to use that.

Either. I'm not afraid to say, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not sure, but I can find out. I've got friends that are smart enough to figure things out too, so I'll just, you know, I can ping them and say, hey, you know, can you answer this for me?

Can you help with this? So yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, Chris, what, tell me how you got started in doing the podcast.

Oh, that's so convoluted. It was, it started when... You got voluntold for it. I was just gonna say I got voluntold.

Sure.

Like this podcast. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. So, what happened was, the person I was friends with at the time was starting his own podcast and it was hosted on something called Blog Talk Radio. And it was a live radio type show and he was looking for somebody to help run the sound, the virtual soundboard.

And all I did was hit the like button. And next thing I know, I'm being told, I was hoping you'd volunteer, Chris. Next thing I know, I'm out buying a new laptop because the one I had at the time was completely incapable of doing it.

And this is well before the variety of equipment that's available today for recording podcasts was available. I mean, we were cobbling things together. You're doing things over cell phones. You're using cheap headsets, trying to make it work.

And so I learned on the fly how to get involved in podcasting. And eventually myself and Richard Story, who was also recruited at one point, would begin to kind of host alternatively when our friend was not available.

And, you know, he might be out at a conference or some evangelistic evangelism event. And so we would host in the interval. And so over time, we spent a couple of years doing that. And then at one point, I felt compelled to step away because I was being introduced into a whole new world that I'd not really been part of.

And that was just how insane Christian social.

Media can be. So I mean, they're so kind all the time. Nobody ever takes shots.

Nobody ever. You're obviously not on my feed.

So I had stepped away for a time. And unfortunately, me doing that, I think kind of was the tipping point for the show and things kind of wound down.

Well, Chris, I don't know. You know, Caleb, this might be a bad thing, but you know that his very last guest on that show he's referring to was me.

You broke his show.

I broke... So just saying, if this... Folks, if this is the last episode you hear of Caleb Gordon,.

You know why.

Yeah. Caleb Gordon program is completely just shattered because Andrew's now on it. Well, not... No, wait a second. You've been on once before. This is your second time, Andrew. So you didn't break it last time.

So...

Oh, give me time.

So, but anyways, I had taken a step away trying to discern why I did what I did. And over time, Rich and I maintained our friendship and we began talking about, well, what if we did something? And it was back and forth and back and forth.

And it came out that it came to fruition that Voice of Reason Radio was born. And that was a really bad marketing decision because we had no idea how many atheist programs used that name.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah. So we're like, well, we had to constantly qualify. And for the first couple of years that we did it, it was really hit and miss. You know, we would record when we were able. We have very small audience for like double digits if we were lucky small.

And 2019, I had the opportunity to go to, and this was something Andrew actually made happen. I had an opportunity to go to Shepard's Conference. I told you occasionally he's a nice guy and he's generous.

He's occasionally nice and generous. And this was one of those things. And it was there that I actually ended up getting to meet some of the people that knew of what we were doing, even if they weren't regular listeners and they appreciated what we were doing.

And that prompted me coming back to say we need to be more respectful of the listeners and try to put out something more consistently. And that's where we became a bit more as best as much as we could to be more weekly.

And we for a time had a decent little audience. It was probably in the, you know, we would be thrilled to see like three, 400 downloads of an episode on a regular basis. And so there was a period where we kind of spiked really high and then it kind of tapered off, which is fine.

It's not about the numbers. And we were just thrilled that people were listening at all. So that brought us up to this last summer when things for Rich really just had been, he and his family just had a lot of difficulties and the show takes a back seat.

We always had two goals. Number one was to honor God in anything we did. And number two was to edify the saints. But we always said that our priority was our own family and our own churches. And if that, if ever the podcast was an obstacle to that, that podcast would be shelved.

And so Rich became the priority. He had to take care of his family. I tried to do it for a little while, but I was also newly retired at the time. I was getting into a new job and I just started attending seminary this last semester virtually.

And yeah, and I, I'm now part of a reformed Baptist seminary, just wrapped up my first semester with the preparatory classes. And next semester, next semester will be my first real, real course. And it'll be in apologetics.

And so it was like, with all that going on, Hey, the podcast has gotta, gotta be on pause for a time, but I've continued to keep writing, trying to put out, you know, some articles on, on Twitter slash X, whatever you want to call it.

And, and, and do also echoing those over on our website.

James White, Elf, and the Buddy the Elf Fallout

So he was so dedicated to his audience. He actually read the book white fragility so that he could explain to his audience. That was painful. It sounds like, yeah, that'd be a painful thing.

To do. It very much is. I, I, I don't have never written in a book as much as I did. I don't think I've written in my Bible as much as I wrote in that book. And that's not to say I don't do that, but it was painful.

It was, Samuel Sayer referred to it as he would rather do surgery on himself without anesthesia and never have to read that book again. And I firmly agree with him.

Chris, did you ever get a chance to watch Am I Racist from Matt Walsh when?

No, I never have. I've heard lots about it. I want to watch that.

So the author of that book came on and, and I would like to get, love to see the full, like, I think he said it was an hour and a half, two hour interview with her. But at the end of the interview, for folks who don't know, Robin DiAngelo is like big on reparations and all.

So Matt Walsh actually brings on a black producer that's been working with him. And he turns to her and goes, well, shouldn't we do reparations? And he takes like $20 out of his wallet and gives it to the, to the guy.

And she goes, he goes, don't you think you should do the same? And she's like, well, I don't want to offend him. And he's like, I don't know. And like he's Matt Walsh is going like, don't you think we should set the example?

I mean, we shouldn't let the, like, she's arguing that the government should do reparations, not her personally. Yeah. And he's like, well, don't you think, you know, we should set the example. So she, she gets guilted into going to her wallet and taking money out.

Now, one of the things is that Matt Walsh with every single interview, he, he puts the price tag of what they charged for an interview. And so he, he did that at the beginning of the interview with her.

And then she gives like, I think it was $70. So he gives the price minus $70. Okay. So the, he had to pay these people. Oh yeah. So it was really interesting. The person he paid the most at $50 ,000, $50 ,000 was, was someone by me here.

So there was a woman who brought her child to Sesame street place, which is not far from where I live. And she ended up trying to sue them for racism because one of the characters, and if you watch the video, the character shakes the hands of a child, looks up at an adult and passes right past her children.

And she says, that's racist. And Matt Walsh actually asked her, do you, do you know the race of the person in the costume? And she goes, well, no, cause they won't tell me. So, you know, it was like really clear.

Like, how do you know it's racist? Right. You don't, you have no idea. She charged $50 ,000 for an interview. Yeah.

Now I can tell you the answers to why they can say that because according to Robin D 'Angelo, the intent makes no difference. It is how it is received. So as long as it is received as racism,.

End of story, it's racism. That is so wild. Even if it's from someone who's black,.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. As long as it is received as racism,.

The reception, not the intent. Common sense is out the window guys. It's just crazy. So absolutely. So I'm going to switch gears. This is a 40 minute program, so I'm going to switch gears and we're going to jump into evangelism.

Evangelism as Ambassadorship: Humor, Questions, and the Law

I want to talk about, you have Striving for Eternity Ministries. Andrew, what do you think needs to take place for effective evangelism? Because I feel like there's evangelism in the church by and large is very faulty.

And I just, I feel it's very shallow and very faulty. Give us sort of a, what's the best way to evangelize?

Well, I don't have the advantage that Chris has of putting someone in the back of my patrol car and having a captive audience. Okay. So I don't have that advantage he has. I know other police officers that take the long way back to the station, you know, when someone's in the back of their car.

But I really think that what is effective, what I find effective is really to a couple of things. So we at Striving for Eternity, we refer to ambassador evangelism. That's what we train people with because it's not just the message, but how you conduct yourself.

And so we have three points to it. One, you want to disarm the person you're speaking to, disarm their defenses by using humor and being polite. It doesn't mean you've got to be a jokester, but it means that they anticipate when you talk about things of the spiritual realm, everything in media is telling them that a Christian is just a bigoted, mean person who's got no fun whatsoever.

I want to have a good conversation. I've learned that using humor and being polite keeps the conversation going, it keeps it where they enjoy the conversation, and the other thing is what that does is it keeps kind of lighthearted on the minor things because the gospel's offensive enough.

So I want the gospel to be offense and not me.

Come on, yes.

But guess what? They're not the only one that could be defensive. So our second principle is to disarm my own defenses by learning how to ask good questions. So I have learned the hard way that by asking questions I can control the conversation, but it keeps me off the defensive.

It keeps me from getting where I start, like, getting as agitated as they are, and then we're getting into a debate. I don't want that. I want them to listen.

And debating is not an answer.

Correct. And so, and the third, and this is, I think, really important because the first two are not really about the gospel, the third is I have found that most, so my background for folks who don't know anything about me, I'm from a Jewish background, I knew nothing about Jesus Christ other than He was Hitler's God.

I'm sorry if that offends you, but that's how we're raised, okay? Hitler was funded by the Catholic Church, that's Jesus, so Jesus was Hitler's God in our mindset. And so I was struggling when I was in college with how to share the gospel and explain what a sinner is, and because that just sounds offensive if you call someone a sinner.

It's true biblically, but so I started to look for ways to define what sin is, and I had some ways that I tried, and then eventually I discovered this guy Ray Comfort, and he did it well. So our third principle is avoid being called judgmental by using the law.

So I use the law of God. Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever coveted? Have you ever murdered somebody? Have you ever committed adultery? I can go through the law, and that is the definition of sin, so that no matter who I'm talking to, Jehovah Witness, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, it doesn't matter.

Every single person knows lying is wrong, stealing is wrong, murder is wrong, adultery is wrong. They know that because God has put His law in our hearts. We have this universal.

Law. Yeah, by default, like Cy Tim Bruggencate, he had these on the show last year, and you know, I don't have to explain God to you. You already know He's there, so that's by default. And when you start to lay those out, and I love how Ray does that, and that's how I stepped into evangelism, was through Way of the Master, and did all those fun things.

In fact, that's how I saw you for the first time, and then you look like you're a picture in your little box there with no beard, and you show up at Fight Lafitte with a beard, and completely throw me off, and I talk to you for 20 minutes like a buffoon, and somebody walks by and is like, hey, what's up, Brad Papport?

And I was like, wait, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. So. Yeah, you know, so Cy came into my.

Recently had Leighton Flowers on my Apologetics Live show, and Cy...

I didn't get invited to that podcast. Thanks for no invitation. Appreciate that.

No one needs an invitation. Apologeticslive .com, any Thursday night, 8 to 10 Eastern time, you can come in. Cy took advantage of that, although he had internet trouble, so he was in and out, in and out, but yeah, Cy, so let me give some background.

Some people may not, if you've watched his film that he does, How to Answer a Fool, he tells the story of this Buddhist guy that he's talking to in California, it's in Santa Monica, I don't know if he mentions that in the film, but he mentions a guy that he talks to that he's saying, the guy's saying, I don't believe God exists, and he says, yes, you do, and he's like, the guy just shakes his head, yeah, yeah, you're right.

I was actually there in Santa Monica, Cy and I just went for pizza, we were coming back, and we run into this guy, and it was the funny, I wish that I had my camera running, because this guy was trying to say, well, God doesn't really exist, as he's studying Buddhism, and Cy just looks at him and says, you know God exists, and the guy just looks down, shakes his head and goes, yeah, yeah, you're right.

It's like, they suppress that in unrighteousness, that's the advantage that we have, no matter who we speak to. Our starting point is, we already know from Romans chapter 1, they know God exists, they just suppress that in unrighteousness.

I don't have to argue for God, I can start with, so I have, I'm a presuppositionalist, I have two presuppositions, two things that I'm going to start with. God exists, and he has spoken, so I start with his existence and his word, the Bible.

I don't give up the Bible to try to prove truth. Anyone that's listened to Voice of Reason Radio, you hear in their back episodes now, but Chris and Richard deal with that a lot and talk about evangelism a lot, especially Richard.

You know, Richard will always end the show telling you to go evangelize someone that week, and they will point out that, you know, when you're speaking to someone, that person already knows God exists, they're just suppressing that.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, and any time I've gone that route, used the law, talked to these things, that people start, they come around, and they're like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've got an atheist friend.

I know it's wild to think that I have a friend that's an atheist.

No, I was just surprised that you have a friend, not that he's an atheist.

No, fair enough. Chris, he's so mean.

I told you.

You tried to warn me, I know. So, John has been to church with me 17 times. I pastor in Kansas, and he is down in the farthest, almost into Texas, and he showed up one day, I was shocked. It's a small little country church, and he is standing in the back.

I mean, you know this guy's got a green mohawk, and I was like, what is he doing? He goes, I heard my buddy got a church, and I had to come check it out, and I was like, you know, this is called the effectual call of the Holy Spirit.

You didn't drive all the way up. He's like, whatever. I have a friend that's in a crummy band, and you're in the band, and I just support you because you're my friend. I'm like, I don't know. He's been to church 17 times now, and we debate often.

He calls me on Christmas Eve, and we talk for an hour. He's like, hey, it's your God's birthday today, and I'm just like, it's, you know, doing this stuff, and I'm like, okay, bring it on, and it's funny because he says this to me.

You're the nicest Christian I've ever met, and you have a good sense of humor, and I was like, we should all be that way. I mean, we should be the happiest people in the world, right? Christians should not be looking like we've been weaned on a dill pickle, so I mean, it's just, you know.

I love that. I credit my dad. That was my dad's. God rest his soul. That was his quip, so yeah, I think go evangelize people, so in the few minutes we've got left here, Chris, what is your plan for 2025 when it comes to your ministry?

You're in seminary. Do you have a plan to expand what you're doing in your realm of kingdom work?

Chris. A plan would assume I have any clue what I'm doing. In all honesty, I mean, Rich's scenario is he's, and I've asked people, you know, please keep him in your prayers because they have had.

Pete. And for folks, Rich is your co-host, just folks who may not know.

Chris. So after the holidays are done, I'm going to revisit whether or not we can, you know, what will Voice of Reason radio look like? We've never planned to, you know, to turn it down and shut it, you know, close up the shop and be done, and so hopefully we will be able to reboot that and kind of, it's definitely not going to have the same amount of traffic.

I mean, with me doing school and working full time and stuff like that, it was a little bit difficult to do as it was, but, you know, solo has made it more difficult, so my hope is if we can do it, I can get Rich back, and that's my prayer for that, and at least hopefully get at least one show out per month, maybe two if we're blessed, and I've really spent a lot more time starting to write more.

The class that, the preparatory classes I had to take this semester were, one was just how to use Logos in general, and Andrew, I'm sorry, your material was not on the syllabus, so….

He's saying that for folks that don't get that inside joke is, so I am a big Logos Bible software user. I have an extensive library, and a lot of people would ask me, how do you even use this tool? I don't know, so there's, I've done a couple of training videos to help people learn how to use it.

Have they sponsored you yet?

Yeah, they do. If you go to Logos .com slash SFE, you can get discounts there if you get upgrades.

So, but that was one of my classes, and then the other one was research and writing, which gave me heart palpitations, because I haven't had a research paper in nearly 30 years. I graduated from University of Nevada, Reno with a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice in 1996, so the idea of going in and having to do research papers again with absolutely no clue was a bit terrifying.

Wait, Chris, you do realize there's some people in the audience that weren't even born in 1996?

Shut up.

You're old, man.

Anyway, so that was a little terrifying.

I was a sophomore in high school.

Okay, well, you weren't that far behind me, thank the Lord. So, but anyway, this last semester, I spent a lot of time learning how to relearn how to research and interact with scholarship, and I haven't got my final grade back on my term paper, but my second draft was an A-minus.