team building
Camp Orlando
As a staff, we attend Walsworth's Camp Orlando in the summer. At camp in 2018, I received the first taste of high school yearbook I ever had and instantly fell in love with the electric environment the camp provided. In the class Yearbook 1, I learned all the basics of Yearbook design, interviewing and writing. Determined to do the best I could, I completed the mock deadline project effectively and received first place. The second year I attended, I completed the Theme and Editorial Leadership class. As the new Junior Editor-in-Chief, I held the responsibility of creating the theme with the Editor-in-Chief. This class laid the foundation of my yearbook leadership position. It challenged me creatively and pushed my design abilities. I took this class again the next summer as the Editor-in-Chief digitally due to the pandemic. Overall, Camp Orlando gave me some of my favorite memories as a yearbook staffer, truly jump-started my admiration of journalism into a full fledge love of documenting the year for my school and allowed our staff to get to know each other and get excited for the year ahead.
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University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communication Summer Media Institute
During the summer of 2019, I attended the Summer Media Institute, a workshop created by the College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Florida. For the week, you picked a specialization to focus on and I chose Photojournalism. I attended classes taught by the photojournalism professor, John Freeman, and multiple other professors and teacher assistants. We attended general sessions with guest speakers in all areas of journalism. The photojournalism class refined my manual shooting abilities and I advanced my photography immensely. I brought what I learned back to my staff and I helped other students and produce higher quality images for our publication.
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work days
Once a month we hold after school and Saturday work days as a staff. This year, a majority of them have been editor-only workdays to keep the classroom capacity low. While this may serve as a disservice to younger staffers, it has brought the editors closer together. We eat together and work together as a "family." The hours spent together are filled with laughs and watching Gilmore Girls on the smart board while we work. Some of my fondest memories of staff come from these long days in Room 224 and I wouldn't trade them for the world.
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staff inclusion
Since we could not have a yearbook welcome party due to the pandemic or congratulate staffers in person, we sent all the new staffers this congratulatory letter via e-mail. I utilized my school colors and our publication logo as part of the design. To create the confetti, I brought the image into ProCreate on the iPad and drew the confetti with an Apple Pencil. This displays my ability to understand multiple content creating applications such as Photoshop and ProCreate and combine my graphic design skills with my artistic abilities.
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For the holiday season, we held a Secret Santa gift exchange with both the online and in-person students. Brooke Evans, the Junior Editor-in-Chief, and I opened the gifts for those at home and showed them what they got. I wanted everyone to participate so we could try to have as much staff unity as possible during this digital age.
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