I was in class, a junior in high school, and the person next to me didn’t have any other pencils but a mechanical pencil. “It’s broken”, he says to me while showing me the pencil, so I offered to fix it for him. I was taking apart the pencil, piece by piece, figuring out what was wrong with it. It took me a couple of minutes to find the problem. The graphite was broken into little pieces and came pouring out of the pencil. 

I was listening to the teacher talk while still working on the pencil. Once I had cleared out the graphite, I put it back together, added new graphite, and tested it. It didn’t work. I opened up the pencil once again and looked for more problems. I found a piece of graphite jammed in the mechanism that holds the graphite in place. I removed the small fragment, and it worked perfectly. 

This can be related to the problems that you have in life. Even though someone might seem like they’re fine on the outside, they could have many problems on the inside that have piled up. Similar to the small graphite fragments in the pencil, problems that occur throughout life, no matter how big or small, can cause a mess on the inside. 

When I gave the pencil back, he was happy and would show me that the pencil was still working when we passed by each other in the hallways. I would see his smile and feel good about doing this for him and making a difference in his day. This goes to show that if you devote a little bit of your time to someone else to help them with their problems, you can make a big difference in their life, even if it doesn’t seem like a big difference to you.