Sacrificing fun nights at home with her family, idle days about town with her friends, and two weeks of summer, MSMS senior Ella Stone returned to the loved and hated halls of Goen as a 2015-2016 Emissary for the residential public high school.  After 12-plus weeks as an emissary, Stone reflects on her past duties and upcoming responsibilities.  Stone has already lead a group of five female juniors through a week of orientation and conducted tours and other publicity activities for her high school.

“Being an emissary has definitely been one of the best things I have been involved with here at MSMS.  It was fun to get to know the juniors before the seniors came and I was really pleased to come to find that our juniors are going to be a great class, I think,” said Stone.  While leading her “babies” — Shannon Sales, Shivani Patel, Madison McLean, Sierra Howell, and Mary Le — Stone had the opportunity to mingle and meet with the 130 incoming MSMS juniors.

While going through the annual orientation activities, Stone did notice a few changes from her junior year experiences.  The 45-minute orientation sessions focused on straightforward information but also included stress relief and time management tips.

“I think that, considering how things went last year, they are really trying to make sure to let these kids know that that is not going to be acceptable this year,” said Stone.

Stone also had the opportunity to share her personal experiences with the junior class. While orientation activities focused on handbook rules, Stone’s emissary activities focused on personal advice and helpful tips of experienced wisdom.

“We had an emissary Q&A session and probably my favorite part of that was getting to explain that we are a family.  I told the story about how I woke up at 7:55 one morning with a class at 8:00 and I got there on time looking like I’d been run over by a truck,” said Stone, recalling how her classmates accepted her disheveled appearance with an open mind, probably remembering rushed mornings of their own.

During her initial weeks as emissary, Stone also channeled her past experience with her own emissary Delisia Wicks, “the best emissary out of all of them last year.”

“She has definitely inspired me in how I choose to conduct myself as an emissary. One of the biggest things that I really wanted to take from her as an example was that whenever I had a question, she always had an answer and, if she didn’t know the exact answer, she always sent me to the person who had the answer,” said Stone, fondly remembering her own emissary’s constant caring presence.

Returning to campus as an emissary was an honor to Stone, and she looks forward to working with her classmates towards graduation in May and college in the succeeding fall, while also saving time to dutifully answer emissary questions and leave small gifts for her juniors.