Working long nights, completing hard tasks and cooperating with a staff of nine people is a typical agenda for the three editors of the yearbook team. Each editor on the staff has a different job to help with the end goal of putting out their best work for everyone in the student body to have a book to look back on their high school experience. 

Senior Olivia Adams’ job on staff is Editor of Photography. The main job of a photography editor is to make sure the page layout and photos are publishable before a deadline. Before big deadlines editors typically hold a work night to allow other staff members to get pages done. Pages are corrected by the editors to make sure that there are no mistakes before the book is published. 

“We do a page every week so the week [a staff member is assigned they] cover everything that happens that week, get current photos, interviews and quotes,” Adams said. “The next two weeks we finalize it, by adding captions [and then submitting for proof by our publisher]. We always work on finding those little errors like spelling but we try to make it a fun interaction so we’ll bring pizza and snacks. We want to make it an enjoyable experience because it’s a lot of pressure, it’s a lot of work, so we try to make it more fun.”

Yearbook occurs during sixth hour on gold days. Differing from Adams, senior Kamryn Archibald has the job of managing editor. The group partakes in daily discussions before breaking apart to work on their assignment for the upcoming deadline. Club pictures are additionally undertaken by the Yearbook staff, so a portion of their time is used to plan, prep and schedule for this event. 

“When the bell rings we have a team meeting which usually lasts up to 10-20 minutes, it just varies,” Archibald said. “Then from there everyone goes on to what they have to work on. Most of the time us editors will walk around and check on everyone’s pages. Lately in each class we’ve been printing the pages just so we can work on proofs and revisions.” 

The last editor of the three is senior Linda Shine and she has the role of Layout Editor, ensuring the publication is revised and edited to the best of her ability. The three editors met once over the summer before the start of the school year to prepare for the 2021-2022 issue and year ahead. Despite facing COVID-19 challenges over the span of the two years previous, the staff has continued to publish a physical copy of their yearbook, unlike many surrounding area schools. This year the staff has been working on getting more student involvement and overall coverage of the student body. 

“Overall it’s been a great experience, I love the whole staff and enjoy being part of this [atmosphere],” Shine said. “But it’s still hard with all the constant pressure that is on us. We were never taught how to be an editor and we’ve had to figure all of it out on our own. We are still just high school students and learning how to do everything by ourselves has been hard. But it has helped a lot with having three editors this year.”

While typically the role of Editor-in-Chief is left upon one person, for the past several years the NHS yearbook staff has altered this expectation in order to meet their needs. Splitting the role into multiple parts allows for multiple perspectives and overall a more in-depth publication. At the end of a school year, the current editors have the power to name their successor(s). 

“[Being an editor is] hard, it’s different than every other year [we’ve been on staff], obviously because your full responsibility is put into the publication and you really have to dedicate yourself to the whole book,” Adams said. “We’ve had lots of late nights and worked hours on the book, having three editors has helped us tremendously because there is so much to do in one book.”