Song Lyrics and School Pictures: Behind the People Who Make Your Yearbook

Carmen Thomas
onwardtrojans.com

Yearbooks are a cherished tradition that highlight all the memories and achievements of the school year. They are a memorable part of the classic high school experience, but the people behind the neat, glossy pages often are overlooked.
At CHS, the yearbook is put together by roughly a dozen teenagers supervised by English teacher Jennifer Jendrzejczyk.
“It’s research and redoing everything you just did because you didn’t do it right,” said senior Marlee Wilson, who’s been editor since her sophomore year. “That’s yearbook.”
Yearbook involves selecting layouts, filling out spreads, conducting student interviews, and finding pictures. But it all starts with the most crucial decision of the year.
“My favorite part is picking out the themes,” Wilson said. “The theme this year is actually an idea I had freshman year and decided it was what I wanted for my senior yearbook.”
The theme for the Class of ‘25 yearbook? Music.
“I really like the music theme,” said senior Jocelyn Ringler. “Picking out song lyrics has been one of my favorite things, to match with pages.” Every page of the yearbook has song lyrics – even the table of contents looks like sheet music – which was an easy feat because, according to Ringler, “There is a song about everything.”
The theme was so good that, this year, the yearbook staff was advised to enter the book in a competition.
“This is the first year that our Jostens (digital design) representative, Phil Page, told us that we should apply for some competitions with this year’s book,” Jendrzejczyk said. “Because we’ve improved so much in our theme and our content and our coverage that he is impressed with what we’ve done. He thinks we’re ready to apply for state and national competitions.”
In order to be eligible for competitions, the book has to meet certain requirements. For example, sports can only take up 15%, while student life has to make up 40%. The book also has to feature half of the students three times or more. CHS has around 2,000 students, so that’s no small feat. As if that weren’t enough, the yearbook staff has set personal goals, too.
“We also set a goal for ourselves to get all the kids in the book,” Jendrzejczyk said. That includes tracking down what the staff refers to as “ghosts,” aka transfer students, exchange students, and kids who just missed picture day. That’s not the only difficult thing about building the yearbook, though.
“Clubs are the hardest pages to put together,” Wilson said. She described the difference in excitement between competitive teams and calmer clubs. “It’s like Spell Bowl went to state, but Spanish Club just had a movie night.”
Ringler attributes the difference to the success moments.
“With sports, it’s easier to get really good picture-worthy moments,” Ringler said. “Football, you can see who did what whenever you want. Basketball, you know who did what. Volleyball, they upload all their stats. All these things. But Self Care Club? We don’t even know who’s in it, what they do…[Clubs] are just not as reported on as, in my opinion, they should be.”
Sports, on the other hand, are easier to put together, according to Ringler.
“I did both teams that I play on – girls soccer and girls lacrosse – and boys lacrosse and boys volleyball,” she said. “It’s more fun to pick teams that you know a lot about already, know the best people to talk to, and are there for their big moments. I watched boys volleyball beat one of the best teams in the state and got a really great picture of them all celebrating.”
The yearbook staff spends the entire year essentially scrapbooking. The books are distributed in August or September of the following school year – seniors get them delivered to their houses. An entire year’s worth of hard work, all wrapped up in one clean book. And the best part of it, according to Jendrzejczyk, is the inside jokes and memories underneath each page.
“I like when it all comes together, and you can see the whole year,” Jendrzejczyk said. “My memories aren’t your school memories, so I don’t share those little cultural things with you. But my memories with these guys…I like that. All the work that no one else is ever going to know about, but for us, is memorable.”
As Jendrzejczyk said, that’s the most important part. Because yearbooks are supposed to be just that: memorable.