Leadership
Portrait Pages
Getting the portrait pages done during COVID is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Since our school was completely virtual the entire 2020-2021 school year, we weren't allowed to come into school for portrait pages. The people who did have portrait pages had inconsistent backgrounds, bad lighting and it generally was not great. Even so, I was in charge of emailing all of the different freshmen who hadn't submitted pictures, and getting as many as possible. Though a daunting task, I was able to get a lot of portraits we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
Distributing Books
Distributing books is the busiest part of yearbook. Our room is small, and we have a ton of people who come in to pick up their books during lunch time and during passing time, so there is a pretty big sense of urgency to get as many done and out as possible. We have created a good system for this and it ended up being super efficient over the years in distributing our books.
Journalism Conferences
I have been to a lot of different journalism conferences, from local to national, and these have helped me expand my skillset and even win awards! I have learned so many things from these experiences which has been great for developing my skillset and thinking about things I would not have thought of otherwise. This picture is really cool in my opinion, because everyone here was an editor for one of the yearbooks, and we were all women!
Learning to Lead
I was a co-editor-in-chief during my senior year of high school, and though it was at times stressful, I felt well equipped to lead our large yearbook team and keep everything organized. One of the most valuable pieces of feedback I received about leadership was from my yearbook rep. She said that you should never touch someone else's computer. If you felt the need to, clasp your hands behind your back, but she emphasized the importance of guiding people through a problem versus fixing it for them. I am definitely a perfectionist, so it was sometimes difficult for me to allow people to fix things on their own, rather than bulldoze through the problem for them. But I always remembered her feedback, and I think this helped to prepare future yearbookers at my school to be in a great position to do whatever it is that they need.