With the school year coming to an end, people are buying and enjoying their yearbooks. This leaves some students potentially interested in the process and the personal experiences that the hard working yearbook staff had to go through in order to create this 228-page masterpiece.
First off the process is very lengthy, but in short terms the process can be simplified to 3 parts. There is the first part where they have to come up with the yearbook’s style by selecting the theme, page layouts and designs, and lastly decide the topics for the pages. Then there is the second part where the staff has to photograph, write for each spread, and interview sources and just in general fill out the pages with content. Lastly there is the third part where they have to finish off the process with proofreading, advertising the yearbook, selling, and then distributing all the yearbooks to all the people who ordered one.
Selecting the theme and overall style of the yearbook can be a very nit picky process since you have so many ideas and options to choose from. “The hard part about coming up with the yearbook theme was definitely the fact that we genuinely needed to make a decision that would be suitable and lovable for all, as high-school consists of teenagers of all ages,” said editor-in-chief Brissia Juarez.
Although sometimes it can be tricky to design a universally liked cover, the yearbook staff still ended up loving their overall result of the yearbook cover. Brissia stated “We loved the cover, we just did not all love the the cover being colorless, but the book having a bunch of colorful pages inside. Therefore, if the front cover was full of color, I’d prefer that.”
Aside from the trouble creating the cover, the yearbook staff learned to work together and share their ideas and creativity. This really allowed for bonding moments between the staff members. “I loved bonding with my peers and the fact that we were all girls made it so much better,” said Brissia of the 6-person yearbook staff.
Yearbook can be an exciting and busy elective to take, but there could be a few challenging moments that come with the course. Our yearbook staff has agreed that one of the very few challenging moments is to interview sources. Interviewing can be a difficult process since you have to think of a good source to interview, then after finding where they’re located so you can start asking your questions. “Finding people and making sure they reply well was kind of difficult,” said editor-in-chief Litzy Gonzalez.
“Getting the quotes from some people was hard because sometimes people wouldn’t respond or would give really dry responses,” said Brissia. This may sound exhausting to some, but trust me that interviewing isn’t like this all the time. “I think it was fun to get out of class and try to get some answers,” said editor Maya Lucero. Interviewing also gave our yearbook staff the opportunity to go elsewhere instead of being stuck in the classroom all period like most typical classes. They were able to talk to and meet new people during their interviewing process.
Now for wrapping everything it all up, this part of the process can be very slow and tiring because of a few reasons. Selling yearbooks can be hard since you’re trying to negotiate and persuade others into buying it which takes communication skills and courage to go out there and talk sometimes.”The hard part was definitely getting people’s attention; most of the time we went out to sell the yearbooks during lunch so many students were busy chatting with friends and eating,” said editor Celine Sakatan.
However, for the distributing part it was easy for the yearbook staff, because the majority of buyers came by and grabbed their own books. There were a few buyers that never came by for their books, so this required the yearbook staff members to make a few yearbook deliveries.
Seeing how other people responded to the yearbook was a fun and educational way to end the year. “My favorite parts of yearbook were having great memories with the girls and being able to get out of the classroom,” said Litzy. Celine says that “The best part of distributing the yearbooks was seeing the students’ reactions to it and hearing their opinions.”
In conclusion, the yearbook staff went through a lot of obstacles and hard work trying to create this year’s yearbook. Although they had to go through some heavy work, they still managed to make it fun and exciting by working as a team together and still making lots of fun out of it. Yearbook staff got the opportunity to have so much fun together, even if it required a lot of work being done. “My overall opinion is that it was a really fun time all together, it was just stressful at times but that’s just the process in general so it was just really fun and I’m glad over how it turned out,” said Brissia.
“These girls did an incredible job this year. They created an absolutely beautiful yearbook that everyone seems to love,” said Ms. Miller, the journalism and yearbook teacher.
What was YOUR favorite thing about this year’s yearbook? Tell us in the comments!
