An interview
You are asked: "tell me about a time you worked in a team". Your mind goes blank.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
A personal statement
You are writing about why you want to study something. Everything you write sounds like everybody else.
What fixes it?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
"I am a hard worker" is an adjective and anybody can say it. A specific thing you did is evidence, and it is far more convincing.
The shape
What the situation was, what you did, what happened. Three sentences. It works for interviews, applications and personal statements.
Four stories cover most questions
Something you organized, something that went wrong, something you learned, something you did with other people. Most questions are one of those in disguise.
Small examples are fine
You do not need to have run a charity. A shift you covered, a group you unstuck, a problem you noticed — small and specific beats large and vague.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
Claim or Evidence?
Sort each answer.
Which of these would convince somebody who has never met you?
Tap something to move it.
- Empty
- Empty
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
You are asked about a time something went wrong. What is the best answer?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Write your four
- Write four short stories: something you organized, something that went wrong, something you learned, something you did with others.
- Three sentences each — situation, action, result.
- Say one out loud to somebody.
Why: These four cover most of what anybody will ever ask you about yourself.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Adjectives prove nothing. Examples do.
- Situation, action, result — three sentences.
- Prepare four stories and most questions are covered.
For the grown-up
Young people systematically discount their own experience as too small to mention. Part-time work, caring at home, running a group chat that actually organizes something — these are real evidence and usually go unmentioned.
Practicing out loud matters more than writing it, because the gap between a written answer and a spoken one is where most interviews are lost.
The four-stories approach is genuinely how well-prepared adults handle interviews, and it is unfamiliar to most students. It removes the need to invent under pressure.