From the time that I was a teetering tot, clumsily grasping building blocks with awkward, baby-drool hands, I have been told that any job concerning building is the most honest of all professions.

What I thought was nonsense before, I now understand. Building is creating. It’s taking something less useful, and making it purposeful. It’s taking something less beautiful, and making it worth seeing. As a child, many adults shape the environment of your life. Teachers, parents, and other leaders do more than supervise. They inspire. They build. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all these adult leaders, it’s that “making a difference” can mean anything from monumental efforts of grandeur to a small act of kindness.

There comes an important time in a teen’s life when they fall asleep as an unripe juvenile, a ragamuffin in middle school, and awakes as a magnificent, bright-eyed intellectual, ready for high school. While I was making my own glorious metamorphosis from fifteen to fifteen and a half, preparing for my entrance into the majestic world of high school, I met an amazing teacher. His name was Mr. Cameron and he was a builder. The lessons in his classroom amounted to more than just textbook pages, more than molecules and historical figures.

He taught us how to be leaders.

One day, Mr. Cameron told me a story. He said, “Once an ocean tide rolled thousands of starfish out onto the beach, where they were dying without water. An old man came along and spent hours throwing individual starfish back to the sea. Eventually another man walked up to him and asked, ‘Why do you bother throwing those starfish back? There are so many. It won’t make a difference.’ The old man bent and took up another starfish. He threw it back to safety and replied, ‘It made a difference for that one.’”

At the time, I didn’t understand Mr. Cameron’s story. Later, he encouraged me to join an organization that he helped to direct. It was called “W.E.B” and it stood for “Where Everyone Belongs.” A school program designed to provide younger students with older role models, the club paired me up with students four years younger than myself and encouraged me to act as a role model for them.

One of the children I mentored was named Ben. He was a tiny and polite boy with special needs. I led Ben and the other children around school and taught them all the absolute essential knowledge necessary for survival in the world of middle school: where classes were, how to open lockers, which cafeteria lady ladled out the most generous amount of food, etc. The fifth graders were thrilled to have such a cool-cat eighth grader as a buddy, but it seemed like the rest of the school didn’t pay any attention to W.E.B. or what we stood for.

Ben’s older brother was my age, and he was known as something not too short of a punk. Too tough. Too cool. He never did his school work or listened to adults like a proper blossoming young man should. One day, Ben’s older brother approached me and asked me for my help. He explained that Ben’s feelings had been hurt by the harsh words of a classmate. I was shocked because the role of a sensitive and concerned older brother was not one I was accustomed to seeing him in.

I approached Ben and encouraged him not to feel disheartened. I promised that the bully who had said such cruel things simply didn’t understand him. Ben considered me with bottomless chocolate eyes. They were childish eyes, far too large for his head, and yet still untarnished and perfect.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” he asked. I replied, “I don’t just think Ben, I KNOW that there’s nothing wrong with you.” His smile glowed. He hugged me randomly and skipped away. I stood still for a while, blinking after him. Afterwards, Ben was no longer troubled by his peer’s teasing. That day I finally understood what Mr. Cameron’s story had meant. I didn’t need to fix a universe full of problems; I didn’t have to change the whole word. I had made a difference for Ben. The same way Mr. Cameron had made a difference for me.

I have realized that no matter what I do in life, I want to be a leader. No matter what I do, I choose to build.