After months of hard work creating the school yearbook, seeing it finished is a relief. Holding it makes it real, and it is an extremely exciting feeling. There are many other feelings involved when creating and completing a yearbook. From creating the cover to designing each individual spread, hard work and dedication is important in making a yearbook. It’s satisfying for both the advisor, Sarah Miers, and the students, such as Campbell Kelley and Aidan Henderson.

Yearbook planning doesn’t begin on the first day of school, it begins with Miers over the summer! “We start planning the yearbook in the spring. We organize senior pictures and picture days during the summer. We also make sure all spring sports and the musical pictures get taken in the spring. In the fall, we email advisors and coaches to determine how many pages they want,” she says. “We determine the theme, assign pages, and work on student life pages. During Q1-Q3, we work on pages. It takes constant, weekly monitoring to keep up with pages and deadlines. I also have to do picture day make ups, check names, and organize sales, and deadlines.”

To create a yearbook as a student, you must first know what things you’ll need to fill each page. “(It’s) a lot of interviews, picture taking, and editing to perfection,” explains Henderson. It requires hard work from each individual, but those individuals come together to create a team. “Teamwork is a huge part that goes into creating a yearbook. Having a class to help you find people you don’t know, or maybe can’t get a hold of makes our job so much easier,” Kelley attests. All that time and effort pays off, giving an accomplished feeling when the book is finished.

The stress lifted from everyone’s shoulders allows a feeling of ease. “Every year, finishing the book is a RELIEF! We work so hard on the book all year, so finishing it up is when we can finally take a deep breath, and relax,” Miers explains. “It’s such a relief knowing that we don’t have to meet the deadlines every week,” Kelley says, and Henderson agrees: “It feels great. A lot of work and effort went into the yearbook from the staff and Ms. Miers.” The ability to relax afterwards is not taken for granted, but one might ask, why put so much effort into a yearbook anyways?

A yearbook is a keepsake, a relic that makes moments last forever. “It collects all of the memories and our important high school events on paper to keep and look back on great experiences. To say the least, it’s important that we provide the best book for everyone to look back on,” Henderson explains. Having created so many yearbooks, Miers agrees, stating “The yearbook is basically our school’s history each year. We are really the only ones who continually tell Rocky’s stories for future generations. I think that’s a pretty cool job each year. I hope it instills pride in my students, too. They get the opportunity to see different perspectives from their classmates, and see all that Rocky has to offer.”

The yearbook is created by the Journalism class, available to Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors. Rocky’s Journalists have an extremely important role in this school: To document daily life and important events. Creating the yearbook helps students get involved in school, meet new people, learn new things, and discover new interests. The joy of holding the book once it’s finished and printed is indescribable, and Journalism is important to Rock Island High School, as well as the entire world!