You've Got (E-) Mail

Summertime. For many people who work with students, life gets a little slower. You're not bound by the same 9-5 (or 7-3) work day because you're not in the classroom. You get to take a little breather from the unsharpened pencils, tardy slips and dry erase boards. I always like to say that summertime is slow, a time to get caught up on things that got put on the backburner or new projects that were abandoned during the busier seasons.

But that rarely happens.

In some cases, summer months are just as busy and in some cases BUSIER than the school year! Kids don't stop asking if you can meet up to chat, and parents don't stop emailing about what's to come in the fall. This year in particular, I feel as if I've been BOGGED DOWN by emails! Recently I looked at my Gmail inbox and noticed that I had over 10,000 emails in my primary inbox. This doesn't even account for the promotions and updates that come in through a separate tab!

Out of curiosity, I started to look at (and delete) many of the first emails I had come through my GMail account. These emails dated all the way back to 2004! Why was I holding in to these old messages that were over a decade old? I started sifting through some of them and noticed a few trends:

1. People used to send REAL emails to one another. - Sometime between 2004 and now, people dramatically made the switch to social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as the preferred venue for notifying friends and family about big time events in their lives. I have lengthy emails from the period right after college where I would update friends about job opportunities and life plans, and I looked forward to receiving responses about how long distance pals were doing, where they were going and how they were getting there. Now that we have Facebook and the pressure to "do it for the 'Gram." we seem to have lost sight of how special those one on one connections were. Today I've noticed that the majority of my emails are used to communicate professional needs, and those lengthy updates are now, sadly, a thing of the past. Call me sentimental, but I get excited for an email with a title like "Just checking in" or "Long time, no see." (It's even better when I can get such correspondences sealed and stamped with an envelope...the stationery industry would thrive if I were its only customer!)

2. I am living a very different life from the one I was living in 2004. - The period right after graduation from college was still spent doing what I have often referred to as "living the glory days." I was heavily involved in a sorority in college, and even after graduation I was eager to help shape my organization on the national level. I spotted several conversations back and forth with my sorority sisters, national advisors and other student life professionals. I smiled with nostalgia as I remembered national conferences and the late night emails that were exchanged to ensure that we had the right speakers, the right entertainment and the best venues to meet our needs AND budget. These emails were peppered with memories of how I developed leadership skills and people who will always hold a special place in my heart because they helped me to become who I am and who I am meant to be. Those messages are sincere reminders of what was important to me at the time because it was where I invested so much of my time.

3. There are some things that mattered back then and still matter now. - Many people know that this time of year can be bittersweet for me because it's when I start poring over hundreds of scholarship applications from students across the nation who are preparing for their collegiate career. It's also when I remember losing a very dear friend. As I peruse through applications for the scholarship in his memory, I remember him. I think about his laugh and am grateful that I can still remember how it sounded. I think about the 3AM phone calls to talk politics and the motivation that only he could give. I think about meeting his other friends and family for the first time after he passed, and I keep every photo from that time. I see his name in my email and even though the messages are old and insignificant (reminders for conference calls and such), I feel a little tug at my heart as I skip over them. I think about our first year of operating this scholarship, of how we didn't really know what we were doing and how we thought it would be small enough to run it out of a personal PO Box. I think of how this group of friends came together so naturally and how we still keep each other updated on new jobs, relationships and most recently, new babies! And I remember that some things just aren't meant to be deleted from our lives. Sometimes we stress about how things on the Internet are "forever." I warn kids about what to post and what not to post, but this is one of those cases where I look back and am glad that there's such a thing as the "cloud" where those memories can be retrieved if I ever want to look back.

Of course, there are also some thing that I can easily select and hit the delete button. (Why did I subscribe to so many shopping lists and website updates? Why did I think it necessary to keep forwarded chain letters?) As I look through some of the items that I now consider "junk mail," I realize that those forwarded emails containing jokes and health warnings are no different from the memes of Facebook and posts that I still get tagged in today.

And while I have significantly reduced the amount of gigs that I'm using in my email box, I don't at all feel the need to reduce the number of people who have at some point thought it worth their time to type up a message addressed to my email address and hit send. Old messages can be sent to the trashcan, but I feel blessed to have friendships that I can put a star next to and reference whenever I may need them.