import tensorflow as tf

        use_skip_connections = self.options['lstm']['use_skip_connections']
        if use_skip_connections:
            print("USING SKIP CONNECTIONS")
        else:
            print("NOT USING SKIP CONNECTIONS")

        # the sequence lengths from input mask
        if self.use_character_inputs:
            mask = tf.reduce_any(self.ids_placeholder > 0, axis=2)
        else:
            mask = self.ids_placeholder > 0
        sequence_lengths = tf.reduce_sum(tf.cast(mask, tf.int32), axis=1)
        batch_size = tf.shape(sequence_lengths)[0]

        # for each direction, we'll store tensors for each layer
        self.lstm_outputs = {'forward': [], 'backward': []}
