The Impact it Left on Me
I wish you could’ve seen me in middle school, I’ve been wrecking my brain trying to find a picture. In middle school I took an elective — an elective that I love now but hated then, Yearbook. From 7th-8th grade I took Yearbook with a hard hitting teacher, she was firm yet hilarious. She wasn’t just the chief editor for the school’s yearbook she also taught English to special ed students, a class I also had the privilege of being in. She was always firm with the students in the English classes and was a little lenient with her yearbook class. Yearbook class was always fun because we worked with the doors opened to the hallways and had music playing. It was fun watching the kids walk down the halls, probably jealous because we were having more fun than they were. Even though the class was fun, the work could be brutal. There were days where some students—not me— would stay after school to finish up their assigned pages. The great thing about taking a class like a yearbook class was— as I would come to find out later, is the lasting impact it leaves.
With page deadlines on the rise, we came into class to hit the ground running and meet them. The problem was that my yearbook teacher Mrs. Ferrar was a very tough woman. She would never yell but she spoke with authority, there was a sense of respect for her —we were allowed to joke and have fun with her but in the end she was our teacher and our friend. She encouraged us with our pages, giving us ideas on how we could improve them. In 8th grade I took up photography and every photo inspiration I found I showed her. My mom took me to New York for my 15th birthday so that I could take pictures of the city. I really thought I found my niche. At the end of the year we were told we had a project, we had to write about something we loved. I wrote about New York, though it wasn’t a very good report. Mrs. Ferrer told me that I could’ve incorporated my trip in the project. It’s something I think about to this very day. When you’re in a class like this you’re taught to pay attention to every single detail. Do the photos align well? Are the names of the students spelt correctly? If you’re using a photo from the internet—is it cropped well? Things like that. Mrs. Ferrer would note if it wasn’t done properly.
As an amateur photographer, I was assigned a camera to take pictures of kids eating and enjoying lunch hour. I was also given the task of interviewing students for page columns we had. We were supposed to ask them questions like, “what are you looking forward to going into high school?” “How would you describe your 8th grade year?” Along with pages like these I was also in charge of the 8th grade baby pictures page. Boy did that cause a big problem. This was a page I was hoping to get assigned to, having the honor of putting my fellow classmates together on one page as children before high school. There was just one problem— we lost some of the photos. With a graduating class of maybe 300 students we had at least 200 photos, that was even if every 8th grader submitted their baby photo to be included. Somehow between getting the photos uploaded and receiving them we lost maybe 30 photos, it was a nightmare! We called the company who did our uploading, they claimed to not have them. We tore our classroom up and down and didn’t find them. In conclusion, there were students upset they weren’t included in the baby page and unfortunately never received their photos back. When Mrs. Ferrer heard about it and she was furious and I didn’t know what to say about it, they were gone and there wasn’t anything to do.
In high school I retired from both photography and yearbook, it was a passion that died out after my parents divorce. I did however repurpose my artistic skill into other things, like writing poetry, blogging. Over the years since middle school I’ve always done work that was related to my time in yearbook class. As a way to cope with my parents divorce I started writing poetry, I opened my first WordPress account and started sharing what I wrote. I took photos every now and then just to maintain the skill I had once worked on. I’ve written letters to myself as a form of healing— all these things take me back to those times.
I say I hated Yearbook then because of all the hard work that would go into it— staying after school, working my brain to come up with a design. At 14 or 15 years old I didn’t care if the photos didn’t align, I just wanted to finish the damn page. Unfortunately the yearbook isn’t something you do and pass along like an essay paper. It’s something for everyone to enjoy for years on end. Now at 27 I look back at the unaligned photos and it drives me up a wall. The impact this class left on me is profound, blogging now reminds me of working on the yearbook. Working on it to make it special to those who are reading it, wanting it done in time so that those who do read it have it at their disposal. Wanting to strive and make something out of it, building a foundation, growing an audience—maybe starting a small business, we’ll see. But what I do know is that my time in Yearbook taught me to love creativity and take a step back to pride in my work, which is why I love what I’m doing today. It’s the work of my hands bringing something to share with others. It’s building my own dream to life to not have to build on someone else’s dream. That’s why I look back with pride, because I see that the yearbook that I had a hand in creating is out there for others and it’s a part of their history as well. I love that part.
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