Describe a time when you had to work hard to achieve a goal
You should say:
- what the goal was
- when this happened
- what you did to achieve this goal
and explain why the goal was important to you.
Sample Answer
I’m the type of person who never likes to rely on luck. I believe that everything can only be achieved through hard work and determination, and my final year in high school was one of the times that I spared no effort to achieve my goal.
At that point, I was still a senior student and like all the other students, passing the University entrance exam to get into my dream University was my main goal. But for me, I felt that the pressure was even higher since I had chosen Hanoi Medical University – one of the top Universities in Vietnam. There are thousands of students taking part in that exam every year so it is highly competitive.
In order to compete with the other candidates, every day I would spend hours in the library to read as many books as possible and to learn as much as I could. And even after school, I usually stayed up late to review everything I had learnt that day. It was a long process with a lot of hard work but I didn’t feel tired at all because becoming a doctor was one of my greatest desires. I was willing to put in a lot of hard work and effort for that dream and to not let anything stop me from achieving it.
So in the end, all the hard work paid off, and I passed the entrance exam with outstanding results and became a medical student. When I received the results, I was so happy that I burst into tears. All of my hard work for the year had helped me achieve one of my big goals in life so far.
Vocabulary highlights
1. rely on luck – to leave things to chance or fate
2. spared no effort – to try as hard as possible
3. desires – a strong feeling of wanting something
4. hard work paid off – got good results due to a lot of effort
5. outstanding – very good, or excellent
6. burst into tears – to suddenly begin to cry