Stephanie Leone gave me the wrong number. I didn’t learn this until it was too late. But that’s the least of her worries. And it’d be the least of your worries too if you were the student speaker for New School’s 2015 commencement ceremony at the Javits Center on May 22. Or if you handled all of Lang’s social media accounts. Or if you’re a design apprentice during the little free time you have. Or even if you’re just preparing to graduate from the university’s rigorous BA/BFA program. Leone, whose 24th birthday is two days before graduation, has to do all of that and more, plus she even made time to talk to me, a pesky student reporter, so I let the wrong number thing slide.

I text who I think is Leone asking to meet. There’s a reply: “Whose,” not a Who Dis, or even a Who Is this. I text back asking if this is indeed Stephanie Leone and if not then apologies and please disregard. Another reply: “NO.”

Some more confusing messages back and forth with the stranger, an email with my number in it, then a call from Leone and I found myself in a Parsons printing classroom full of paper reams and cutting tools looking out on the sidewalk of 66 Fifth Ave. on a sun filled Wednesday afternoon.

Leone sat at a drafting table and laughed off the brusque stranger’s texts and apologized, saying she was a bit tired and didn’t even notice her mistake. Despite the initial blunder, Leone was eager to talk about “this very big moment we’re approaching,” while Parsons students went about their cutting, printing and pressing of paper.

“I felt like I would be an appropriate person to give closing remarks because I understood a lot of different aspects of why people love this school,” Leone  said. “Over the years I’ve really collected reasons from different people for why they came here.”

Reasons like “not focusing on assigning numerical values to students based on the GPA that they have. Or the number of things that they’re involved with or how many awards that they’ve gotten it’s more asking student to produce different things or solve different problems creatively.”

Leone began her freshman year in 2010 (enrolling in Parsons as well in 2011) quickly set about becoming the ultimate New Schooler by throwing herself into nearly every aspect of campus life. She gave campus tours at the Welcome Center, designed issues of the New School Free Press, and served as an academic fellow even finding the time to join the Village Voice as intern on the side.

Stephanie is more than ready to step up to the podium. “I feel like I have been writing this speech for a long time- for many years in my head,” Leone said.

As much preparation as she’s had, the actual writing of her speech will have to wait for the completion of her two theses, whose classes meet at the same time. The first is a collection of short stories for her major in fiction writing at Lang and the other is an artist’s book complete with prints and poems for a communication design major with Parsons.

Although Leone’s dual degree has allowed her to make friends across the university’s divisions they do make keeping track of things difficult.

“I feel the speech and what I’m writing in my Lang thesis, I find them all blending together,” she said.

“They’re just becoming a Stephanie sob story,” she added.

If a dual degree wasn’t enough, Leone runs all the social media outlets (meaning Instagram, Facebook and Twitter) for Lang and has recently started a 13-month design apprenticeship for the nonprofit publishing house Ugly Duckling Presse. In her own words Leone said, “I can never be one thing,” and this may be true from all the volunteering, jobs, majors and even minors (poetry and illustration) she juggles without even noticing.

All this juggling comes to an end with graduation. Like many seniors graduating at the end of the semester, Leone’s been asked, “What’s next?”

“What’s next is pondering what’s next,” she said, before adding , “To become a human being again. I feel like I haven’t really been a human being this whole year. I’ve just been thesis, thesis, thesis.”

After this,“very large ending point,” Leone will move on to Greenpoint, leaving behind her East Village home of the past five years. “The only thing I want to be seeing for the next four months is the sun literally making me a crisp tan bitch, my Netflix screen and Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” she said.

But she won’t rest for long, she said.  She has job interviews lined up as well as the rest of her year-long apprenticeship.

“I want to see what my degrees are worth in the world,” she said, “I should be marketable to survive in this city.”

Leone is sad to leave The New School, particularly Lang.

“I’m very sentimental about Lang. I feel like the Lang grandma,” she said.

“It’s so hard to talk about loving something. It’s especially hard to talk about loving The New School,” Leone said, “It’s either the most uncool thing to be in love with, or it sounds incredibly sappy and cliche to say, ‘I love the New School.’”

Leone’s ready to graduate, but said returning to the university to teach would be a “dream.”

Right now though, she’s making sure everything’s in place, no mistakes, no typos, and on a Wednesday afternoon, surrounded by busy Parsons students, this means putting the right number into my phone and going on with the rest of her day worry free.

“I really adore everyone here. Each and every day I’m just so overwhelmed by how talented and creative and brave everyone is in all of their work that they do,” she said.

“I hope I don’t cry at the podium, but I can’t promise anything.”