Yearbook

I was editor-in-chief of the yearbook team at school this year. I never wrote about it before, mostly to avoid venting. Yearbook responsibilities have been a stress and fairly constant headache.

I was in charge without knowing exactly what my responsibilities were, with a very kind advisor who was less knowledgeable than myself. I headed a cheerful layout team with low standards and almost no concept of deadlines. I had the job of designing spread layouts with no graphic design knowledge. I didn't even know how to use InDesign until several weeks ago. I was constantly having to make decisions and give orders when I really had almost no clue what should be done. And always there was the fear that I could be poring hours into this project only to produce a very poor yearbook not even in time for graduation. And that's only the beginning of the problems.

But there are more reasons to give thanks. I've seen the prayers of myself and others answered through the help of many friends. The editor from two years ago redesigned the layout spreads in February and designed a cover, a new mother at the school took many wonderful pictures. That woman, an aunt of my one of classmates, and my advisor volunteered to help in any way I could use them. The mother of one of my classmates proofread, wrote copy, and worked with the printer. A teacher helped with technical issues and transmitting the material to the printer. My good friend and editor last year helped in so many ways the last few days. The yearbook team, especially techies, rallied to meet final deadlines. And many thanks to my long suffering techie leader, Andrew Hanko for his hours and hours and hours of work.

The last pages of the yearbook were sent to the printer when I was in California. I left school Wednesday night with the table of contents undone, and one big section to be made into a pdf document and ftp-ed onto the printer's site. What a huge relief it was to hear on Thursday evening that the yearbook had made it to the printer, a day before the final deadline! We all let out a big cheer so everyone around the restaurant in San Francisco turned to stare!

Today the yearbooks arrived at school. I expected to feel overjoyed or relieved when I saw the finished work, but I didn't. Every page is too familiar, too full of memories that make me shudder. And unfortunately what comes to my attention when I flip through the book are all the errors that I didn't catch before. It's rather sad. I hope it's a book that I can enjoy looking at months or years down the road.