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So many things have changed since I went to high school. This has become something that has been made painfully clear to me since my daughter became a freshman this year. From square one I noticed that things have dramatically changed since I graduated in 1973.
Maybe it has to due with the fact that I had kids later in life than most of my contemporaries. Maybe it was because people I knew who had high school age kids a few years back didn’t stress to me the changes that they were experiencing in a loud enough voice. I knew they were complaining about many things but it never sinks in like it does when you are living them first hand.
While I could never tackle all the little things that have bugged me during my second freshman year, I will get to all of them eventually over time, but I have to start somewhere. So, where better to start then at the end.
As you all know, every year you attend high school you plunk down a ton of money, this year $65.00, for your yearbook. It is meant to be a comprehensive view of the year. One that you will go back and look at for decades to come to relive those moments in time and to refresh your memory as to who your past classmates were.
I can’t count how many times my kids or I have gone to the bookshelf to look somebody up who may have resurfaced in our life or to get a chuckle from a goofy hairstyle or dress from the day. A yearbook has always been a photo journal of a time in your life. That was until I saw my daughter’s yearbook last week.
The first thing that struck me was its immense size. I mean anything that big should come with the option of having wheels. I must say, even though I hadn’t opened it yet, at first glance at its size I felt as though the cost may have been justified. Unfortunately the next step was to open it and that is where I think that in ten or twenty years the students will not be too happy.
As I mentioned above, a yearbook is supposed to be a photo journal, not a written one. In my opinion, the only writing inside should be the autographs and musings of your friends and fellow classmates. While we are on that topic I have to say that the creativity and artistic flair of many of those who have signed my daughter’s annual make the scribbling in my annuals look like hieroglyphics. Special mention go out to Makenna, Simmi, and the Blank Sisters. Armed with boxes of multi colored marker pens their written thoughts have more of the look of art than writing.
Sadly, this year’s annual is lacking in the photo department and has more writing in it than most encyclopedias. Don’t get me wrong, the layouts that were used to put it together were tastefully done and had this book been anything but an annual it would have been fine. Unfortunately it was an annual.
It is often said a photo speaks a thousand words and truer words were never spoken especially when applied to a yearbook. When looking at all of my yearbooks you could combine all of the words contained in them on one side of one page. In this yearbook, even though there may be pictures included on the page there are over 100 pages with substantial writing. That is way too much. Especially when you see how the pictures, that in the past have been the dominant part of the pages, have been shrunk to make room for the writing.
In all fairness this is not exclusive to this yearbook alone. As I checked with people in other areas I found this trend has been growing. As soon as I asked the question about how their children’s yearbooks were laid out the response was always the same, they hated it. When they started describing it, the format was almost identical with all the complaints I have.
Apparently there is some company out there that gives a seminar or a camp on how to do an award-wining yearbook. According to some people I’ve talked to they give you choices of preset formats for doing your book and your staff basically fills in the blanks. If this is what’s happening, and somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, if you are putting together a magazine this format is fine. For a yearbook it doesn’t work.
One of the things that seem to be lost in the book’s assemblage are, in the immortal works of Mr. Spock from Star Trek “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Nowhere does this apply more than in the environment of high school where multiple groups and teams have multiple participants. Those are the pictures that the “many” will be coming back to year after year to see, not the one blown up picture of a single participant or player.
As an example, if I were a member of the track and field team, I would be extremely pissed off. On the two pages dedicated to the team there is one large picture of a single individual that is 7”X 6”. Next to it there are three pictures that measure 1 ¾” X 3 ½” that divide up the team’s 133 participants. Just so you don’t have to do the math that makes the combined pictures of the team still smaller than the one individual. Even with a magnifying glass you can’t see the majority of the participants who I know gave just as much to the team as the one did.
The track and field team is not alone. All of the sports teams got the same treatment, which is a crime. These students/players are not only expected to get good grades but perform as athletes representing their school and should be celebrated. Not with words but with a respectable size photo of the entire team.
I really felt bad for all of the different clubs whose pictures were buried in the back of the book in the same small size, intermingled with the index. It was as though they were thrown in as an after thought or filler around the index. Had the book not had so many written pages the clubs could have been more prominently displayed in the body of the book, which is where they belong.
The other injustice in this format was the singling out of six students out of a school that has 1828 students. I don’t know how the other 1822 students feel but I’m sure many were thinking “Why not me, isn’t my life as special as theirs?” Isn’t it tough enough going to high school without watching a fellow classmate, or six, getting two pages each dedicated to them? While you, on the other hand, bust your ass all year to get good grades, while being expected to clear a series of hurdles, and you get only a class photo or team photo where you can’t be seen without a microscope. Like the saying goes “something’s wrong with this picture.”
Just so I’m not misunderstood, which even after saying the following I’m sure somebody will suffer from selective reading and not get the point, to the staff that put the book together you did a great job given the parameters you had to work with. The book looks great. It just doesn’t work for what it is supposed to be. Regardless of what “Yearbooks R Us” tries to tell you, a yearbook is to supply a photo journey through the year for everyone. If you want to follow a set format, look at your parents’ yearbook.
I guarantee you’ll get the story without having to read a word.
The Shrub Speaks: "This is an historic times." Denver, Colorado, Jun. 1, 2004
B.D.’s Response: Dubya, you and your staff writers are killing me. Seriously, you have to stop saying this.
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