All English teachers love coffee. Well, most of them do, at least. In all my years working as an English teacher, I’ve met very few colleagues who don’t like a cup of coffee in the morning to give them a bit of energy before class. That’s why I was interested to see this article on the Reuters website. I’m not an expert on medical matters but I think a more effective solution would be to reduce the hours these doctors need to work.
There was some really interesting words and expressions in this article, too. The first interesting expressions is where Steven Hambleton is quoted as saying:
For management to just say go and have a cup of coffee and get over tiredness, it cheapens the whole issue,
We can use the phrasal verb ‘get over‘ to talk about recovering from a physically or emotionally difficult experience. We often use it to talk about recovering after the end of a romantic relationship. For example, we could say “It took me weeks to get over my last girlfriend”.
Another interesting word in this quote is when he says it ‘cheapens‘ the issue meaning that it makes it seem less important or serious than it actually is.
He uses another interesting expression later, too where he is quoted as saying:
We are talking about serious issues here, and this is not just a serious suggestion at all. It can’t be a weakness to say you’re dog tired,
In this situation, ‘dog tired‘ means very, very tired. Another related expression is ‘work like a dog‘ meaning to work very hard.
The last expression I would like to look at is slightly later in the article when the author mentions a ‘full monty‘ takeover. When we talk about ‘the full monty‘ we man doing something to the fullest extent possible or in the most complete manner possible. A good example of this is a movie called “The Full Monty” where a group of male entertainers become very famous for taking off all their clothes!
How do you help yourself stay alert if you are feeling tired?
Today’s photo is by Anya-Anya.