The words on my math book were starting to fly off the page as my attention span started to deteriorate.When one of my classmates walked in late and went straight to her desk to put her head down, I found my distraction and also got concerned.I tapped on her shoulder and as she looked up and i saw her tear rimmed eyes, any second thought i had had of going up to her even though we weren't close vanished.

As I asked her what happened and she told me about the anxiety attack she had just had, I gave whatever advice I could to her and listened to her as she vented about a problem she was facing. She thanked me with a hug the next day. I felt glad that even though I had never really had a proper conversation with this girl before, I still managed to make her feel better by just listening to her for 5 minutes.

In one of my classes, there are only six students and while we love our teacher , we never quite understood her teaching style and nor did it benefit us.However we felt too guilty to do anything about it.My friend however decided that if none of us were going to voice out our concerns, she would.She went to our coordinator and in a very respectable manner explained the issue.It resulted in our teacher taking accountability and asking us to give her suggestions which helped improve our studies.

My friend’s willingness to help herself and others out and my teacher’s readiness to accept accountability for it and work towards bettering it made me realize that standing up for yourself and for the people around you is imperative. A few weeks later I was put in a similar situation when one of my other teachers was creating an unhealthy environment in her classroom and it was affecting all of our studies. My friends’ actions inspired me and I decided to take a stand for the people in my class and myself and went to speak to my vice principal about the matter. In doing so, not only did I show my classmates to fight for what you want to happen but to take a stand against those who abuse their authority.

The  smallest action can have the most powerful impact. Which is why smiling when I lock eyes with a stranger or giving compliments to the girl standing next to me in my school washroom is something i've tried to implement in my daily life. We all our going through things that we don’t want to speak about. However, being someone who is always there to listen and comfort others and finding ways to make the people around us feel loved and appreciated are ways we can positively impact our communities.