📙 Part 2: Describe a time you were very busy

This episode's vocabulary

Hectic (adj.) - full of activity, or very busy and fast.

Rush/run someone off their feet (idiom) - to cause someone to be very busy.

Preliminary (adj.) - coming before a more important action or event, especially introducing or preparing for it.

To shoulder (verb) - to accept responsibility for something.

Burden (noun) - something difficult or unpleasant that you have to deal with or worry about.

On the side (idiom) - in addition to your main job.

To be an island (idiom) - to be by yourself.

Prolonged (adj.) - continuing for a long time.

To power through sth. (phrasal verb) - to continue in a strong and determined way until the end of something, even when this is difficult.

Schedule (noun) - a list of planned activities or things to be done showing the times or dates when they are intended to happen or be done.

Overwhelming (adj.) - difficult to fight against.

To be up to your eyeballs in sth. (idiom) - to be very busy with something.

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Questions and Answers

M: Hello, sunshine and our premium dear listener! Today on our podcast speaking part 2 "Describe a time you were very busy". You were busy bee, as busy as a bee. Rory is gonna say when it happened, where he was, what he did and he's going to explain why he was busy. Rory is a busy bee. So pretty much every day he's super busy. If you want to have some time with Rory, you have to book Rory in advance like one month in advance, so Rory has some free time for you. So this is how busy Rory is and always has been. Rory, now this is your time to shine. Your favourite topic about how busy you are and Rory maybe is going to be talking about his whole life.

R: Or just a certain period of time in my life. Shall we get started?

M: Could you start speaking now, please?

R: I can remember a time when I was getting ready to go to university again to study primary school teaching, and that was quite a hectic time and I was actually quite run off my feet. I had to take a preliminary course in maths with the University of Aberdeen. Since I was in Moscow, this was all online and pretty much for self-study, so I needed to invest a lot of time in that. And this all happened alongside my work for the podcast and my main job as a teacher and director of studies. Thankfully, I had a great set of colleagues to help with this. And they shouldered some of the burden, but it was still quite a lot. And in addition to all of these other things, I also decided it would be a great idea to do some freelance work and make a little bit of extra cash on the side. And that was almost more than I could handle. But I still managed. Again, I couldn't have done this alone. Like in this respect, I am very much not an island. And I balanced it all with a very healthy social life. It helps that my job is like my hobby, so I don't mind doing it for prolonged periods and just powering through the more difficult parts. I mean, not that there are that many difficult parts, to be honest. To work with children it's actually quite delightful most of the time. But this particular state of affairs lasted for about four months before the university course ended. And that was a small mercy because by then it was the middle of the Russian winter, so it was really cold. And we would soon have to move apartments. So looking back, it's rather lucky that everything happened the way it did. If it'd happened all at once, and I didn't have all of these really supportive colleagues and a very flexible work schedule, then it would have been overwhelming and I don't think I would have managed at all. I'm quite hopeful that it'll never happen again, though. I mean, despite the fact it was fairly exhilarating, it's still not great to be totally up to your eyeballs and work like that.

M: Are you usually that busy?

R: No, not like that anymore.

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