Creativity and invention knows no age. It’s amazing what students can create if they believe they have a gift to offer the world, one that can make a difference.

Natalie Hampton, a 16-year-old teenager from California, did just that. She was attending a new school in seventh grade, and wound up eating lunch alone the entire year, because the thought of approaching a table of strangers and getting socially rejected was too intimidating. Five years later, at a new school where she was thriving, Natalie still remembered how ostracized she felt.

The world moves fast nowadays. Eyes strain and hearts race as notifications, pings, emails, tweets, and snaps pop into our stratusphere like helium balloons against a low ceiling. We’re so driven to succeed, to have all the information we require to fulfill our dreams and our purpose, that we sometimes forget the most basic component to success: cultivating human connection.

She looked at the page in disgust. Words tripped clumsily over the page, as blunt and coarse as a washerwoman’s hands. Her eyes fell upon the hardcover copy of her favorite book, displayed with reverence in the uppermost corner of her desk. In that moment, she decided she could never be or create something as magical as the novels she held so dear. Defeated, she balled the first draft in her angry fist, and dropped it along with her dream of becoming a writer in the wastebasket as she left, nevermore to return.