When I first thought about the Carterville High School yearbook, I pictured the finished book, all the photos, colors, words. However, behind all of that book are the people. Everyone on the yearbook staff has their own ideas, personalities, and backgrounds. It takes all of us together to bring our yearbook together. When I first walked into the class, I was nervous. I walked in and sat near senior Marlee Rosenbery, our Yearbook’s Newspaper Editor-in-Chief. I already knew her because she was my sister’s best friend, but I didn’t know how much closer I would be to her and all the other staff in this class by the end of the year.
On our first day of class, we did headlining. If someone in our class asked me what that was I would probably have no idea. A headline is the title of a story, usually written in large type to grab attention. Our second day was really fun. We created monsters out of Play-Doh. Mrs. Dorris, our yearbook advisor, paired us up. I was paired with Marlee and we created a monster and then had to go around and trade parts of our monster with other groups until we finished with an entirely different creation. It taught us to work together as a team.
Freshman Ciara Galindo said, “It taught me to work with people I usually don’t work with and allowed me to be creative.”
Yearbook seems easy, but it’s not. The most challenging part of the yearbook for me was the choice pages. It started off as me just helping one of our staff members with the page. It turned out to be me designing the page and doing it all. I’ve spent many months on these pages, changing the design and colors, moving quotes around and more. I’ve learned from this that creating a yearbook is not easy. It takes time, and you even get stressed.
Other freshmen in our class have learned the same thing. Freshman Lillian Helminski says, “Creating the yearbook is fun, but it can be challenging; there have been some pages where I struggled, but it helped me learn more about creating a yearbook.”
Now, when I look at the yearbook, I won’t just see the pages. I will see the work, memories, and people behind every part of it. This class helped me grow in my ability to communicate, be creative, and manage my time. This experience showed me that the little moments we capture today are the one people will look back on the most.
