Students create a yearbook for a unique year
Because this school year is almost entirely online, not many students expected a yearbook at the end of this semester. However, despite the difficulties of a year lived in a pandemic, the 2020-2021 NPHS yearbook is still in the making.
Both Ramya Ukkan, senior, and Mallory Norton, junior, are editors-in-chief of yearbook, supervising their staff and making sure pages are made. “Ramya and I come up with the plans for the week, and we give everybody tasks to do and we delegate what we need them to do. We kind of oversee everything, so we are the last ones to have our eyes on it before we send it to Jostens to be printed or get proofed back,” Norton said.
Alyssa Moffit, junior, is a staff member for the yearbook, and has a variety of tasks to do for the production. “In a day, I usually work on the page or pages I have been assigned for that deadline, which includes interviewing people around the school, editing pictures, designing the page and sometimes making small graphics,” Moffit said.
Being online, the yearbook staff has had their fair share of difficulties. “I mean, it’s definitely been a challenge doing everything over Zoom. We have not been able to go and take photos of events because sporting events and other school events have been canceled or they’re over Zoom, so that’s definitely been difficult,” Ukkan said.
Because they have brought on new staff members, Norton believes it has been difficult to train them online. “It’s been really hard to teach them Indesign and Photoshop through Zoom because we can’t sit over someone’s shoulder and say ‘OK now you do this’ or ‘now you do that’ and show them exactly what to do,” Norton said.
Norton believes that having a physical representation of the year students went through makes the process worth it. “I feel like that’s the biggest motivator that we have, a hard copy of something that we get to show our families, friends and our future children and show what we did in high school,” Norton said.
The yearbook is going to be a little different from previous years, given that this year has been spent online. “We’re just trying to create a yearbook that resembles this year. It’s not going to be the most perfect yearbook you see out there, or the photos might not be as good quality as last year, but we’re trying to show that no matter what’s going on we’re still fighting and we’re still making a yearbook that resembles the trials and tribulations that people have gone through this year,” Ukkan said.
Staff members believe that the class is worth joining because of the people in it. “I want to encourage people considering joining the yearbook next year to sign up! It is the class I always look forward to and it is a great way to meet new people because everyone on the staff is kind and accepting. It is also a great way to become more creative, and it is so exciting at the end of the year to see all your hard work in a book,” Moffit said.
Those who want to submit photos or ideas to the yearbook can send them to their email: [email protected]
