Algebra 1 question???????????????

it always helped me to ign small values to the variables to work out the theory with numbers and then distribute in a way that makes the numeric answer correct. so if y is 2 and x is 3 i get an answer of 6(9^4) or 6*9*9*9*9. if you try to distribute this you will end up with a much larger number (36^24 if you distribute to the or 36^4 if not). so IMHO I don't think distributing in this case is a good idea at all.