We're Ahead of Schedule With Michelle's Exciting News

All Ears English Podcast

The episode begins with hosts Michelle and Aubrey sharing the personal news that Michelle has unexpectedly welcomed her third child earlier

Key takeaways

• Michelle Kaplan announced the early birth of her daughter, who has been receiving care in the NICU.
• The phrase 'ahead of schedule' is typically used in a positive context, such as finishing work tasks or flights arriving early.

Main topics

• Personal announcement
• Vocabulary: ahead of schedule

Notable quotes

connection, not perfection

Conclusion

Listeners gain both emotional connection through personal storytelling

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2694. We're ahead of schedule with Michelle's exciting news. Speaker 1 (0:10) Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection. With your American hosts, Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz. Coming to you from Arizona. and New York City, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe. You Speaker 2 (0:51) don't want to miss my exciting announcement in today's episode. We'll also share three ways to describe something that arrives early. Speaker 3 (1:04) Hello, Speaker 2 (1:04) Michelle. Speaker 3 (1:04) How are you? I Speaker 2 (1:06) am doing well, Speaker 3 (1:07) Aubrey. How are you? I am great. Quick question for you. Have you ever had an Amazon delivery that came way earlier than expected? Speaker 2 (1:17) Mm. Yeah, sometimes Amazon, it's weird. Sometimes they're not as fast as, as you would hope. And sometimes all of a sudden, you think it's going to be, it's going to take much longer, and then it just arrives earlier than expected. So yeah, that has happened to me. That's always a special surprise. But speaking of special surprises, I have had something else come earlier than expected. I did not even get a chance to announce on the show that I was pregnant with a another baby. And I already have that baby earlier than expected. Congratulations, Speaker 3 (1:55) by the way, on behalf of all the listeners. I'm sure everyone's excited and also Speaker 2 (1:59) probably very surprised. Speaker 3 (2:01) The Speaker 2 (2:02) baby came Speaker 3 (2:02) very early. So you hadn't even had a chance to announce that you were expecting. Speaker 2 (2:07) Yes, I did not have a chance. So I had a baby just pretty early on in my third trimester. And so I have three children now. I'm a mother of three. I have a little baby girl. She's been in the NICU for quite some time, but I wanted to officially announce it. She's doing well, hoping I'll have her home soon. But yes, earlier than expected. Yes. Speaker 3 (2:34) Oh, it's so tricky because sometimes things are so exciting when they come so early. And then with something like a baby, it's kind of scary. So I'm grateful that there are NICUs that can provide the medical care necessary. I'm glad you've been able to be with her in the hospital. And so, yeah, and I'm glad you are sharing it with us now. Congratulations. We're so excited for you to welcome a third baby into your acute family. Speaker 2 (2:58) Thank you. And, you know, I'm sure that we've had listeners who have had something like this happen. I mean, maybe a NICU stay or something like that. NICU, it's like that's where the babies go when they need a little extra support or maybe they've been born early. So, yeah, I'd definitely be curious if you have experience with that or questions about that. Let me know. Definitely feel free to write us your questions. Speaker 3 (3:27) Yeah, definitely. And in celebration of Michelle's early baby, we thought it would be fun to share an episode with vocabulary when things do come earlier, happen earlier before we're expecting it. So we're excited to share some of this fun vocab because what a great way to connect if something like... certainly not about babies, lots of different things could happen before you expect it, right? Getting a job, maybe getting into a certain university, if you're immigrating, sometimes things take longer than we want, but sometimes it happens earlier than we expect. Speaker 2 (4:01) Yeah. And yeah, so we are going to talk about you know, just we're going to share three ways that you can talk about something arriving early. And so we're going to get into it in just a second. But we want to remind you, wherever you're listening to the All Ears English podcast or watching us on YouTube, hit the follow button or subscribe so that you never miss anything. Speaker 3 (4:24) Awesome. Yes. All right. Let's dive into this, Michelle. Our first phrase is ahead of schedule. We use this a lot at work, right? But it could be for anything that's planned. It's generally positive, right? If something's ahead of schedule, that's Speaker 2 (4:40) a Speaker 3 (4:40) good thing that it happened sooner than you would expect. Speaker 2