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Written by 8020 teachers. Do not memorise it — take the structure and the way ideas are developed, then speak about your own life.
The longest I've ever waited for anything was in a hospital corridor while my grandmother was having emergency surgery, a few years back, after she'd had a fall at home that turned out to be more serious than anyone initially thought. I was waiting, along with my mother and an uncle, for news on whether the surgery had actually worked, essentially, since there'd been some complication mentioned right before they took her in that nobody explained very clearly. It ended up being almost six hours, sitting on those uncomfortable plastic chairs outside the operating theatre, with almost nothing to do except watch the little light above the door that indicated whether surgery was still in progress. Honestly, for most of it I felt fairly useless, which I think is the specific kind of unpleasant that waiting in a hospital produces — you can't fix anything, you can't speed anything up, all you can do is sit there. My mother kept trying to distract herself by talking about completely unrelated things, work, some cousin's wedding, and I went along with it even though neither of us was really listening to what the other was saying. When the surgeon finally came out and said it had gone well, that six hours just evaporated in a way that's hard to describe — I don't think I've ever felt relief quite that physically. It's the one kind of waiting I hope I don't have to repeat anytime soon.