A kinda sad fact… many Yearbook Advisors have to be coerced into being the Yearbook Advisors!
“How could this be” you ask?
Well, let’s parse this. Taking on the yearbook is like running a small business. Here are a few of the things to do list for a Yearbook Advisor:
- Recruit a Staff.
- Organize the Staff.
- Choose a yearbook editor (maybe the most important decision you will make).
- Hope like heck you choose the yearbook editor wisely.
- Paginate the yearbook (decide what is going to appear in it… KNOWING, due to page limitations, someone(s) are going to be disappointed).
- Let your yearbook company know how many yearbooks to order (this info is typically requested in December… like in December you will know how many yearbooks you will sell… guess low and you will have to go back to print to get more yearbooks, which, unless you were off by at least 100, is too expensive, so deal with the disappointed students; guess high and you have hundreds/thousands of dollars for yearbooks you can’t return but STILL HAVE TO PAY FOR).
- Schedule staff meetings to work on the yearbook.
- Wonder why only half of the staff showed up to the meeting.
- Schedule another meeting to work on the yearbook.
- Wonder why only a quarter of the staff showed up to the meeting.
- Teach the staff how to use the always overly complicated print yearbook software.
- Teach the staff how to use the always overly complicated print yearbook software again (and probably again).
- Check the staff’s work (or wonder why there is no work to check).
- Organize a staff to sell yearbook ads (if you are going to sell ads).
- Start selling the yearbook.
- Start collecting the money from the students who are going to buy the yearbook. NOTE: some yearbook companies will set up a dedicated school store so this process is easier, but you NEED to check the progress of sales).
- Start worrying that, although you ordered 400 yearbooks, by March you have only sold 263 copies.
- Start doing math… if I only sell, oh, 322 copies (that are costing $72 each), how upside down will I be in June (fortunately, this is easy math, 400 – 322 = 78 x $72 = $5,616!!! Oh crap).
- Start preparing the principal for a little unexpected monetary shortfall in June.
- Cut the price of the yearbook.
- Get what is remaining of the staff to rush to turn in pages for the first/second deadline (the first one was missed… don’t sweat that, MOST schools miss their first deadline).
- Call your yearbook representative or company and discuss what will happen if you just, maybe, possibly miss your 3rd/final deadline.
- Go to bed that night and don’t sleep.
- Repeat the following twenty-plus times a day: “The yearbook will be here soon (unspoked, as soon as I have finished it)!”
- Finish the yearbook three weeks late. ‘I’m sure the book will be on time, miracles happen all the time,’ you tell yourself.
- Throw a party for the three students who stayed on the yearbook staff.
- Continue not sleeping until you get an email from your yearbook company that your book has shipped… four days before graduation.
- Congratulate yourself on getting the yearbook out before graduation.
- Rush excitedly to the shipping doc where your yearbooks have just arrived.
- Sit on a crate and flip through your masterpiece.
- Organize the distribution of the yearbooks.
- Reduce the price of the remaining 47 yearbooks left unsold (that $5,616 is now down to a manageable $3,384, how could the principal be upset with that?).
- Deal with complaints (the good news is that for every complaint you hear, there are 82 compliments you never will hear).
- Schedule a meeting with the principal to discuss the call from Ms. Smith about her son’s misspelled name and what you are going to do about it
- Gather your yearbook staff, now down to two, to insert the crack & peels for Jimmy Smith into all 400 copies (wait, if you only sold 361 – you got some last-minute sales – reducing your little monetary issue down to a paltry $2,2808 – do you have to put those annoying crack & peels in the unsold copies?).
- Schedule another meeting with the principal to explain why there is a picture in the yearbook with one of the senior’s lonesome single fingers displayed behind a teammate’s head in the baseball team picture. Oh, and while you are there, give her the good news about your tiny deficit dropping down to $2,2808… well, maybe just round it down to around $2000 if she seems a little cranky.
- Feeling a little vulnerable, tell the principal that you would be thrilled to do the yearbook again next year!
If you were aware of the above, you understand why you had to be coerced into being the yearbook advisor.
The above, however, is why I love, respect, and worship my yearbook advisors. Your gals/guys are the BEST.
For the princely sum of $162 dollars that you have been paid as the yearbook advisor (after taxes after you purchased with your own money a new mouse for the computer, 8 Sharpies, 12 pizzas, 22 bottles of soda, 6 dozen donuts, three bottles of whisky, which comes to $0.68 per hour) you have preserved the memories of the most important year in the life of 361 students. You touched the lives of between 19 and 2 staff members, teaching them valuable life skills and creating relationships that will last quite a while.
Well, the above is a pretty ugly picture of being a yearbook advisor. Within the 38 bullet points are some silly things, some scary things, and many things that are definitely part of the job. While some of the more scary (and silly) things are hardly typical, I have experienced each one at least once in my career.
If you are not a yearbook advisor but are currently considering becoming one, please ignore all the above. If you are a yearbook advisor… THANK YOU. If you are a serial yearbook advisor, you will definitely go to heaven.
Oh… and doing a YearBoxx yearbook eliminates a majority of the complications described above!
