Some sort of greeting
This explains my Google search history...
Welcome back to The Jack, it’s been a while, but we are back and here to stay.
I have a lot of new readers so, welcome! I am so excited to be writing again. I am planning to take this newsletter in a lot of different directions. I am going to share more opinions, my side projects, and longer-form content. And of course, I will be continuing the previous format of this letter, where I share the cool things I do each week.
Here are some quick updates. I am a senior in college now which is one of the most unusual experiences I have ever encountered. I have written about this inevitable end in the past. Still, the version of me that wrote that piece would have never anticipated the uneasy, nervous, yet hopeful feeling I am experiencing now. I hope to write more about this in the future.
I had what I would call the best summer of my life in 2024. I attribute this to my inability, or I guess I can call it my refusal to say no. Again, more on this later.
Now it is 2025, and I am in my final semester at Yale, and all I can think about is the past. I’m sure this does not come as a surprise to many of you since I have written about change and the past in a few of my old letters.
This is a letter on the practice of reaching out to old friends.
It was the first day of 6th grade, and I was back at the bottom again. After climbing the ranks in elementary school, and building up my social status among the students and the teachers, I have arrived in a new oasis with almost nothing and no one. Middle school was meant to be a new beginning anyway. I was growing up, and it was time to act like it. Grown-ups do hard things like moving from one place to another, and that is what I was experiencing, a move.
I’d heard stories about the school. The ones where the 7th graders are snorting Adderall in the bathroom and overdosing on Xanax. The narrators would tell us to make good decisions, “You don’t want to end up like those suburban kids who have claims to gangs and don’t know what to do with themselves.” I had no clue how long I would last at a school like this. I was a sheltered child—eleven, scared, and silly. I had never even heard of these drugs, or seen a real fight, and I was not curious.
My first class was advanced social studies. Standing in the doorway, I scanned the room, hoping to meet eyes with someone I knew. The only way to survive a place like this is to find an ally and never let them go. And there she was, Keiri, my friend from my old school. I scurried towards her, clenching the straps of my bag, and sat in one of the three empty seats at her table. The room was hot, and my nerves were not making it easy to cool down. It was August. August in Georgia was always hot. I grabbed the back of my chair, using the stability of my tiny grip to torque my body. I glanced at my other classmates in fear—these were the drug-loving violent kids from the stories. Their baby faces were only a facade; they were dangerous, and I could not forget that.
Almost immediately, the volume rose. I was startled by how quickly the class skipped over the hushed first day of school energy. Everyone was comfortable enough to look at their neighbor and start a conversation. I guess we were all in the same place: eagerly looking for people to bring along with us on this fresh start. I was no fool, so I quickly did the same. I turned to my right to a boy with one side of his uniform collar flipped up, Dylan. He didn’t look like a monster. His smile was sheepish and skewed to the right. I was surprised by how much this eleven-year-old had to say: he described the landscape of the pointing out the kids he knew from elementary school. As his finger moved around the room, it eventually landed on me.
“Do you know anyone here”
I pointed to Keiri and shrugged. After she introduced herself the whole table was engaged.
“Keiri is a little too hard for me to remember, we’ll just call you Kiwi,” Dylan said giggling.
By the end of that class, we all had nicknames. Mine is a little too embarrassing to share. The nicknames felt like a pledge or something. A symbolic moment that solidified our friendship. With Dylan’s introduction, I was quickly integrated into the school’s social scene. I hadn’t gone to elementary school with these kids but I might as well have. I was relieved that the hard part of the year was over.
When Dylan and I met, I didn’t know we would attend the same high school three years later. When high school started, we found ourselves in the same predicament, sitting in a class filled with faces we had never seen before. He was my ally this time. This school was different—tame. Our new classmates wore Ivory Ella shirts and Vera Bradley backpacks. The girls had side parts, and every boy in the room wore Sperry boat shoes. Where the hell were we?
Dylan and I knew we could have some fun with these kids. We liked to scare them with stories of our infamous middle school (the same way someone did to us). We played this game where we compared our friends from middle school with the kids we’d met in high school.
“They wouldn’t last a day there,” we thought.
Four years later, Dylan and I would not be going to the same school anymore. He was off to UGA, and I was moving up the coast to New Haven. We would eventually lose touch as soon as college started.
In my junior year, I was laughing hysterically in my dorm room, alone. A memory of Dylan resurfaced, and I could not help myself. I decided to text Dylan that afternoon, and after waiting almost 5 hours for a response, he hit me back.
“Who is this?” He jokingly replied.
We began catching up on three years of lost time. It felt good, refreshing even. My friend of seven years was doing well at his new school— another successful transition. After our long text exchange, we didn’t speak again.
Since then, my fixation has been looking up my old friends. It’s a fun exercise. You have to spend some time remembering their hobbies or guessing where they may have gone to school (LinkedIn is useful for this). If you're looking for someone from your distant past, knowing their last name is crucial. Once you start to forget their last name, that’s when you close your tabs and stop trying.
I’m usually successful.
Most of the people I've found are currently in college. Some have written books. Some have joined the army. Some have moved across the country alone. Some have graduated and started work. Some are married. Some have kids.
When I am feeling bold enough, I’ll send them a message to let them know that I am thinking of them. It is not always a written one (an Instagram follow request does the trick). It’s nice when you get a glimpse of the life that your friends have created, and it’s even better when they tell you more about it.
Since I started writing this letter I was reached out to by a friend from first grade (a crazy message to receive). I didn’t even realize we still followed each other on Instagram, but I couldn't help but smile when I read her message. She told me about her new job, and coincidentally, another girl from our first-grade class works with her. Since it's outside the town we grew up in, the connection feels even more unexpected.
With each transition, we are met with a herd of people who will continuously contribute to the experiences we have. A lot of their influence is passive but important. The small exchange I had with Dylan in the 6th grade shaped my social behavior in middle school and high school. Chatting with him years later changed the way I approach and appreciate old friends.
There’s always a layer of awkwardness when reaching out to someone you haven’t talked to in a while—kind of like the hesitation you feel before giving a parent feedback. But just as parents appreciate hearing that they are doing a good job, your old friends will appreciate hearing from you!
So go ahead and send a text.
Until next time, Dona, out.
Songs of the week:
In the spirit of old friends, I am bringing back the Songs of the Week section. These are the songs I currently burst into a spontaneous singing session with.
Song 1: Space Oddity
Song 2: Margaret
Song 3: Naive