Story #35: Happy Stone

Today’s story is truly one of a kind and is the first story to feature an object, a symbol, a tradition. It is the story of Happy Stone. The tale goes as follows:

Back in the day when then-Executive Director Tammara Anderson brought her young son David to work one day, he saw that one of the student staff members was not having a great day and started decorating a stone he found for him with lots of glitter, stickers, and color. To cheer the student up, David gifted the stone to them – and “Happy Stone” was born.

Since then, “Happy” has become a symbol for encouragement, acknowledgement, and just overall happiness at the house and beyond because Happy, in true USC fashion, has now become a traveler. Each week, Happy is passed on from one student to another one during our program assistant staff meeting. The student who has had happy in their possession for the week will take a few minutes to talk about what they did together during the past week and will then proceed to declare who will be the next one to spend a week with happy and why they deserve that honor. Usually they will choose someone who has helped them out a lot recently, someone who has been a great team player, or just someone they want to give some extra happiness that week.

As part of this tradition, Happy has been on the most exciting adventures, whether that is travelling abroad (and causing the program assistant who took Happy in their bag some customs and boarder issues), going to concerts, attending lectures, or just offering some comfort during the stressful finals season. Some of Happy’s adventures can be seen in Happy’s Instagram account, that existed only for a while until the student with the password to it graduated. (If you are out there reading this, let us know and we will happily revive this account 😉)

Happy has been with our student staff through so many important moments – even the COVID19 pandemic. When JEP had to shut the office and the physical stone could no longer be passed around, Happy was passed on in spirit, virtually. In the last two years, Happy has also gotten a little sibling – Exuberant Boulder, who was carefully selected and advocated for by then-PA Alan Dong, who felt that we needed more opportunities to cheer each other up. So now, every week, both Happy and Boulder will find new students to hang out with.

It feels special to see that a tradition that was once born from a young child – who is now the CEO of LA’s BEST Afterschool Enrichment Program, by the way – wanting to cheer someone up is not only still passed on by our current students, years later, but also evolves with the needs of new generations.