There are multiple ways to separate items in a list or tuple: list = [ 'Yesterday' , 'Beer' , 8.51 ] date , item , price = [ 'Yesterday' , 'Beer' , 8.51 ] print (list) print (item) You can access a list and the items within it using functions and then have the function do something with those items. def drop_first_last (grades): first , *middle , last = grades avg = sum (middle) / len (middle) print (avg) drop_first_last([ 65 , 75 , 65 , 88 , 99 , 34 , 22 , 10 , 99 ]) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhXOsgdC9h0