Jacob R. | What You Don't Know
JANUARY 13, 2020
When you’ve dragged someone around Rome for ten straight hours on an itinerary scheduled to the minute—as I have with Jacob—and your friendship survives the day, well, it’s bound to survive almost anything. We recently discussed the extent to which a fight between us would be irreparable. Since we’ve never fought, the conversation was inconclusive.
Jacob, I dare say, might be the closest thing I have to a brother. He has been there since Stanford began—since those first weeks of freshman year when I thought I didn’t want to be his friend, to wandering through Main Quad listening to Taylor Swift’s Reputation together for the first time, to hours spent lying in bed watching The Bachelor and Twilight and Big Brother and the Amazing Race. To Florence. To laughter, and tough love, and a lot of bread. (More bread than I can count.) He has been there through heartbreak and tears—I remember one notable afternoon where, after I had spent ten minutes crying in his room over one thing or another, he turned to me and said, Veronica, you need to stop crying and do your work. Seems harsh, but it made me crack a smile. He is one of the few people I can count on to do that for me.
Jacob is from LA, raised in a close-knit and conservative Jewish family. He tells me that, through growing up Jewish, he discovered the importance of understanding your own identity, your own ethnicity; loving the practices you grew up with; loving Jewish holidays. This part of his identity has been continually challenged, whether by his decision to wear or not wear a yarmulke at various times throughout his adolescence, or by his experiences with antisemitism, or by Jewish Studies and Yiddish classes at Stanford that have allowed him to connect to a rich history of language and culture that he could not so easily access otherwise.
Yet he has been able to face these challenges by means of guidance passed down from his parents, who instilled within him a love for learning and education that he has been fortunate to pursue in a myriad of ways. Unlike many other students you might find, Jacob tells me: Stanford has been a very peaceful experience for me, stress-wise. A part of this peace derives from the comparably intense nature of his time in high school, but he has also just chosen to study the things he loves, including ethical AI, mental health and psychiatric studies, and, of course, Jewish Studies.
(There was actually a period of time where Jacob was the only Jewish Studies minor at Stanford. Imagine that.)
What I really admire about him, though, is the unique combination of curiosity and drive that keeps him searching, striving, waiting to see what he will want next. Right now, he is interested in product management, for the ownership and creativity that the job provides. His dream job, he tells me, lies at the intersection of product management, AI, tech, and mental health—I would love to work at a company like Headspace. But he is patient. I’m not pressed to get my dream job right away. And I think that dream can completely change.
Laughing, he admits that just a week ago, he thought for two hours that he was going to minor in biology. There’s no psychiatry undergrad major or minor, but I think there was a way to make it count towards bio. His interests have developed and changed throughout his time at Stanford, and he is unfazed by those transitions. I was a classics major for a week… I think I applied here as an art history major… My interests are very disparate, all over the place, but I love that. And I think my plan, or my ideal job, can completely change, and I’m fine with that.
What strikes me is that this process of self-discovery—of new realizations—does not scare him. A year ago, I was not taking any psychiatry classes. Four years ago, I had never coded in my life. Six years ago, if you had told me I was going to be taking Jewish Studies classes at Stanford, I would never have believed you. But I feel like it’s totally natural to evolve. That’s why I’m not in a rush. I love this about Jacob—that he doesn’t fear what he doesn’t know. It’s a trait I’d do well to learn myself.
And this love of education extends to all parts of his life. As with school, he finds deep value in his friendships for what they have taught him. Friends are a way to learn how to be a better person. I wonder what he learned from our ten miles of hills in Rome. Jacob hates walking.
(A side note. I am so happy that Jacob and I were able to study abroad together. We were living across the hall from each other when we were accepted into the program, and until we arrived in Florence, we drove ourselves crazy with all the potential food, travel, and ART that we would be able to experience. Maybe he hates me for making him traverse double-digit miles in Rome, but we also freaked out together over the Caravaggio paintings hung in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi; marveled at the beauty of the Pantheon; snuck a couple selfies at the Sistine Chapel—please don’t arrest us, Vatican officials; and watched High School Musical back at the Airbnb after it was all over, munching breadsticks, exhausted. I love him for the comfort he provided me those first weeks, when all else felt overwhelming, unfamiliar. I love him for accompanying me to my first Italian gelato, pizza, karaoke bar. I love him for knowing me so well that, when he told me later he’d never seen me as happy as I was in Florence, I believed him in a way that I could never believe myself.)
Besides my hometown friends, Jacob is the person on this blog whom I have known longest. I cannot imagine what college would have been like without him. He has been there through every up, every down; he has recommended me skincare products; he has introduced me to more reality television than I previously thought existed; he has been unafraid, time and again, to be honest with me when others would not. As he has learned from his friends, I have learned from him, and I find that I am a better person for it. So to you, my dear, I say. Thank you.
Photo courtesy of Jacob
