📙 Part 2: Describe an activity you enjoyed most in your primary school

This episode's vocabulary

Progressively (adverb) - gradually.

Frequent (adj.) - happening often.

Limitless (adj.) - without limit.

To doodle (verb) - to draw pictures or patterns while thinking about something else or when you are bored.

To look back (phrasal verb) - to think about something that happened in the past.

To draw (verb) - to attract attention or interest.

Downside (noun) - a disadvantage of a situation.

To carry (something) on (phrasal verb) - to continue doing something, or to cause something to continue.

Questions and Answers

M: Rory, give us your story!

R: I actually really liked drawing when I was younger. It didn't matter what kind we were doing, just the act of creating something for our imaginations on paper was enough to get my attention. We used to do it all the time at the start of school. But it became progressively less frequent the older I got, since it was seen as something childish, that you did on your own time. Not a skill to be developed in school. And that was sort of a shame since I was pretty good at reproducing things I could see or had seen on paper. Or even if it was just something I'd created from nothing in my own head. We would have these competitions together to see who could draw something like a dinosaur model the most accurately, or who could make the most violent scene from some made up storyline or video game. And by we, I just mean people in my class at school, who would hang out together. We didn't really have a lot of tight-knit friendship groups at that point, because we were so young, everyone just hung out together and moved from one group to the next. It was quite fun because the possibilities were pretty much limitless. And you could doodle whatever you wanted in little to no time at all. I always used to look forward to finishing things I'd started once I got through my schoolwork, which admittedly was almost never, but it was nice when it did happen. And then I could get back to drawing. It's all a bit unfortunate and sad, however, looking back on it now, because school wasn't quite made for that sort of thing. And you had to do work on specific things in a particular way, rather than do what you were naturally drawn to. If you'll pardon the pun. And even at break times, which would have been ideal for the sort of thing, you didn't get given anything to draw with or even access to something like that. I think that's why I gave up in the end, since there wasn't much opportunity to do it and develop naturally. However, despite that downside to things, or to how things were done at the time, I'm really grateful to have had the chance I did get to draw at school. If I could do it again, I think I might have taken a few more chances to carry on with it.

M: And do you draw now?

R: Sometimes, but not as... Not in as much detail as I used to.