I was working on phrasal verbs with my students today and one of the words in phrasal verbs in question was “tire me out”. After seeing the phrasal verb, along with some others we were looking at in context, I set them a discussion task involving questions using the phrasal verbs. The question I asked them was which tired them out more, online classes or face to face classes.
The answer surprised me a little. They said that online classes tired them out more. I was a bit confused, but since they have been trained to give more information when answering questions, I soon got to hear their interesting logic behind the answer. One of them explained, and was quickly backed up by the others in the class, that with online classes they wake up only 5 minutes before class and stumble over to their computers without much thought. When they take face to face classes, they have to get up earlier, shower, eat breakfast, and make the commute. They then explained that this “woke them up.”
I had to consider that they confused “being tired” with “something tired them out”. I could certainly see their logic. However, due to a large age gap, maybe they hadn’t really confused it. Maybe lying around all day waiting for classes to start online really did tire them out. They live in a world where everything (except English classes) is provided “on demand”.
They went off on a tangent about not needing to get ready for class and I thought of myself getting up early, taking a shower, shaving, and eating breakfast before teaching the first online class of the day. I am thick skinned, but they were making me out to be a chump.
I should relate this to my weekend. I didn’t shave from Friday morning to Monday morning. I had a decent amount of growth going. My girlfriend regards my stubble as “daggers’ but by the third day, I could imagine it was starting to get softer. I briefly toyed with the idea of growing my first “pandemic beard” but so many other people had beat me to it.
I relish the oppourtunity not to shave. It is always good to give your face a vacation. However, and my girlfriend is going to love me admitting this, shaving off those three days of stubble also felt pretty good. Which one is the Perfect Moment? It doesn’t really matter. I enjoyed both of them.
Hmm, I’m not sure which your students meant either “being tired” or “being tired out”. One thing that tires me out is spending several hrs a day online, rather, it tires my EYES out. I was wondering if students who are taking remote classes online have the same problem… but probably not since most students are younger than me. I didn’t have this eye problem til more recently.
Spending too much screen time tires them out and makes their eyes tired, but they stubbornly refuse to accept that and blame it on other things. I try not to get all old and fuddy duddy and try to explain how they will soon start experiencing shoulder pain.