This event took place about 4 years ago when I was about graduating in higher institution. My goal was to graduate as the best student in my faculty (faculty of management) and not just my department alone (mass communication).
In my first year, I was the 10th best student when the results came out. I felt very bad but I knew I was the cause and all it meant was that I had to read more. By the 2nd semester of that same session, my CGPA rose from 2.50 to 2.70 as a result of hard work. I then told myself, if I could read harder, I would beat the best student in my faculty who had 3.85. The highest CGPA the school was using back then was 4.0.
Fast forward to my final year, I was already in 3.80 in my first semester with the best student having dropped a bit to 3.83.
During our final exams, we both knew we wanted to come out best, so we both read extra hard, I knew all these because I had friends in his department who were always telling me what he thought about me and how much of a treat I was to him graduating as best student and vice versa too.
On this fateful Thursday morning while preparing for convocation, we noticed that the result had been pasted and over 500 students from my faculty all rushed down to check our results. My heart was beating so hard like I just ran a marathon or like I was going to die because I had never felt like that before.
When I spotted my name, I quickly turned my eyeballs to the column of the CGPA where I saw 3.87, I was happy because I came top of my department but my happiness wasn't complete yet because I wanted to top my faculty, so I quickly moved to the result of my main challenger who was in marketing department to check his result. He had 3.86, I topped him with just 0.01 point. I screamed so loud that the HOD had to come out.
It was one of the happiest days of my life and to show that, I went to exhaust the money in my bank account to hold a feast for my friends because at the end of the day, the school gave me a decent amount of money to congratulate me for graduating best in the faculty.
It was from that moment onward that I told myself "whatever you want to achieve, just stay focused and truthful to it, someday you will surely achieve it, no matter how big it is".