….My High School Yearbook!
Throughout my high school years, the club and extracurricular I have the most pride in participating in was Journalism, particularly the yearbook. I was allowed to join in my freshman year, something that rarely happened. I began helping capturing candids of the students in between classes and during lunch. I was also given my first byline, working on a timeline that began the first year my high school published a yearbook, and included other historical dates from my hometown and bits of national history.
The next year I was officially part of the yearbook staff, and given the position of co-Sports Editor. This position was perfect for me because I was a student athlete myself and associated with many of the coaches and athletics personnel of the school. Our duties included everything from designing the layout for the entire sports section, coordinating what to include on the pages, going to major games for action shots, and contacting each coach and team to schedule team and coach photos.
My Junior year was the most interactive and progressive year for me on the staff. I was given the position of co-editor of the yearbook. As a rule of thumb for our staff, we try to have both a senior and a junior editor-in-chief, so that there can always be a teacher and a student for not just the basic layout and planning aspects of the publication, but for the management and financial parts as well. I was included in all the discussions of costs and fees, helped coordinate the senior section, which included advertising to the upcoming seniors of where to have their senior portraits done and editing the senior section, which was reserved for the editors. It was by far the most stressful, but influential year for me in yearbook. I also helped work on the opening sections and sports section, and wrote/worked on a few more stories for our Mini Mag section, including my first spotlight article. Another reason I loved this yearbook more was it was the first time we came up with a theme and used it throughout the whole book. The theme was a Pirate’s Log, and we used terms like Admirals for the faculty and staff, named the Class section the Pirate’s Crew and gave a nautical rank title to each class.
My Senior year I moved up to senior editor-in-chief with another senior as my co-editor (I know we broke the rule.) I was most excited about the theme for this book because I thought of it from a song I was listening to one day and it brought with it all kinds of ideas for the book. The summer before my senior year I was given the chance, along with my former co-editor and our new advisor, to go to a yearbook convention of sorts in Orlando, Fl called Yearbookpalooza. There was hundreds of schools there and many professionals who gave classes and seminars the whole weekend on tips and workshops for creating the next year’s book. Each school was given the chance to sit down with a creative designer who used a special computer program to help create our cover. I took my song inspiration and gave her the idea to create a shoebox full of photographs, and the end result came out like you were looking in this shoebox and coming across your memories. This year was extra special for my high school and the staff because for the first time in FBHS history, our yearbook would be in full color! This opened so many more possibilites for photo ideas and stories and articles we could cover. We also went digital this year, going from layout paper and pica rulers, to an online website through Herff-Jones called eDesign. It was a major change for me and my staff, but we realized the benefits of working online and being able to edit multiple pages at once. I am by far the most proud of this book and the accomplishments we were able to achieve.
C.K. 