You’ll forget most of your high school grades. You won’t forget who sat with you when you ate alone.

Grades fade quickly once nobody uses them, and social memory does not fade at all. The afternoon somebody sat down across from you when you were on your own stays available in detail for years, because being chosen or overlooked gets stored differently from a test score. That holds whichever side of it you were on.

If you are the one eating alone right now, that is not a verdict on you, and it usually changes. If you have a seat and a group, use it and go sit with somebody this week. Thirty seconds of effort can be the part they keep.