Big Walnut’s Stayton personifies service above self

Jes­sica Stayton

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Debat­ing var­i­ous career paths, Jes­sica Stay­ton deter­mined that all her pref­er­ences were either related to sci­ence or people.

“I really enjoy peo­ple. Talk­ing things over, help­ing to deal with emo­tions,” the Big Wal­nut senior said of her deci­sion to major in psy­chol­ogy. And while she has not ruled out the pos­si­bil­ity of research, she thinks she would pre­fer to work directly with people.

Jes­sica has decided that her col­lege choice is Deni­son Uni­ver­sity, fol­lowed by Wit­ten­berg and Ohio Wes­leyan uni­ver­si­ties, both of which have already accepted her.

“I think I started think­ing about col­lege in the sev­enth grade, con­sid­er­ing either Deni­son and Kenyon at the time,” Jes­sica said. Psy­chol­ogy entered the pic­ture when she began eighth grade, where she began “really talk­ing to peo­ple, and won­der­ing how the thought process works.”

It was when she attended a young writ­ers’ pro­gram at Deni­son the sum­mer before her junior year that she knew she liked the envi­ron­ment and pro­fes­sors she met at the school. The writ­ing pro­gram sold her on Denison.

While ready to spread her wings, Jes­sica admits that she is “one of those kids that love high school. It’s a really good envi­ron­ment. I will miss it. Col­lege will be a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. I will learn who I am, but I will still miss high school.”

She laughed.

“I’ll be that kid that comes back and vis­its,” she said.

Cur­rently, Jes­sica is in the midst of play rehearsals. She is head of cos­tumes for the pro­duc­tion Legally Blonde.

It is her last pro­duc­tion with Big Wal­nut, her fourth one now as head of costumes.

As much as she enjoys the posi­tion, she admit­ted it can be stress­ful at times, but then there are a lot of other things on her plate as well.

Jes­sica is involved in mock trial and has been since her fresh­man year. The team made it to region­als where they will com­pete later this month.

“Hope­fully, we will make it to states again,” she said, adding that last year was the “first year ever at states.”

She is also pres­i­dent of LEO club this year.

“We do a lot of ser­vice,” she said, not­ing they will hold the first induc­tion since the club came back after the school district’s failed levy.

Jes­sica is also the school ambas­sador rep­re­sent­ing Big Wal­nut for STAND UP Delaware, a pro­gram that rein­forces drug free, pos­i­tive think­ing in teens. Through this pro­gram, she is also on the drug-free Delaware board as a youth advisor.

She is also pres­i­dent of the school writ­ing club, which was founded dur­ing her sopho­more year.

“There are 15 to 20 peo­ple in it this year. I love all the pro­grams I’m in, but writ­ing is a strong pas­sion of mine,” said Jes­sica, who helps to men­tor oth­ers in the club.

Jes­sica also per­forms ser­vice through National Honor Soci­ety where, among other ser­vice projects, she helps with Relay for Life each year. She also helps vol­un­teer when needed through her mother’s Rotary Club, has helped tutor ele­men­tary stu­dents in Span­ish, vol­un­teered to help Peo­ple In Need and gen­er­ally just picks up vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties as she hears of the need.

She cur­rently works at an ice cream shop in Sun­bury which will open again in March for a new season.

“It’s nice to work in the com­mu­nity,” she said.

Already in Span­ish Honor Soci­ety, she expects to be inducted into French Honor Soci­ety soon.

“Lan­guages are another of my pas­sions. I’m try­ing to teach myself Korean,” Jes­sica said. She plans on tak­ing two lan­guages in col­lege. “I like being very active.”

This year she is tak­ing band; advanced place­ment courses in psy­chol­ogy, lit­er­a­ture and chem­istry; French II; ancient medieval his­tory; and sociology.

Eng­lish teacher Mike Ruark has Jes­sica in his Advanced Place­ment lit­er­a­ture class.

“Jess is one of my favorite stu­dents this year for many rea­sons,” he said. Aside from being very active in his class, she “is always will­ing to take a leap or start a dis­cus­sion. Her atti­tude is first rate and so is her work ethic. If I had a class full of stu­dents like her I could get a lot accom­plished. She is a great stu­dent and leader.”

Jes­sica sees trav­el­ing in her future. She gets the urge to travel from her aunt, who she hopes to vaca­tion with this summer.

“I’m hop­ing either Japan or Korea. The Asian cul­ture is the most dif­fer­ent from ours so it inter­ests me,” she said.

She offers the fol­low­ing words of wisdom.

“The most impor­tant thing is that you push your­self as far as you can go with­out going over the edge,” Jes­sica advises oth­ers. “Try to reach your poten­tial yet know your lim­its … and find happiness.”

Jes­sica is the daugh­ter of Doian and Monte Stay­ton of Sunbury.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Feb 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.