I know, this one’s a little weird and probably not for most people, but I loved being a part of the yearbook staff at school. Yes, our yearbooks were just a fraction of the size as those offered to our public school peers, but it was still a blast. It was my first experience at page layout, at getting a chance to come up with my own designs and logos (and then dealing with those designs being changes, switched, altered, edited, scrapped, and all-around bamboozled), at writing copy, and at just playing a part in creating a publication that would be printed and disseminated to an entire organization. At the time, I just looked at all these things as fun ways to spend a few hours after school. Who knew that one day I’d be doing all these things professionally?

I was a member of yearbook staff for three of my four years of senior high school. Two of those years I was assistant editor. I’m still not really sure what that title translated to, but it looked great on my college applications. I also got to play photographer every now and then, which was awesome: playtime with an SLR camera, which was so much cooler than my little point-and-clicker, plus the freedom of getting out of class to attend sporting events that needed photo documenting. Who was always the big winner there? Me!

See that photo at the top of this entry? That’s my old yearbook staff folder. Again, hi, I’m a hoarder. Pleased to meet you. I found this while I was sorting through stuff at my parents’ house a few months ago (see, I told you I took photos that would one day be used for Flashback Friday entries!). I also suspect that this is a photo of artifacts that some readers have probably never seen, like that pica ruler. Really? And hand-drawn page layouts and paste-ups on graph paper? Adobe InDesign sure rang the death knell quite loudly for this entire folder. Even though it wasn’t that long ago since the last time I used these tools (15 years isn’t that long, right?), looking at them now makes me laugh and think, “Did I really use all this stuff? Really? And why the hell do I still have these things? Wasn’t I supposed to return them at the end of the year?”

Tsk, tsk. So if my yearbook teacher ever reads this post, just drop me a line and let me know where you’d like me to return these things. I’ll be sure to mail them off as soon as I can… 😉