By Sydnie Sabbarese
Full disclosure: Sydnie Sabbarese is a member of the Yearbook staff.
The yearbook serves as a recap of events that have occurred throughout each year, such as school assemblies, dances and sports games. Now that COVID-19 has prevented or impacted these events, it leaves many of us wondering what content will make up the 2020-2021 yearbook.
It was clear to the editors and staff at the start of the school year that the yearbook would not contain as many in-person photos as the previous ones had.
“My expectations for the yearbook at the beginning of the school year were similar to what we’re currently doing,” said junior Nisheille Esposo, the writing editor and photo manager of Yearbook. “I expected that we were going to have to increase the number of features to make up for the sports and events we would lose.”
Despite the fact that there wouldn’t be as many in-person events to take pictures of, Yearbook editors remained fairly optimistic about what the year had in store.
“My expectations were fairly high because I knew we were going to have a good team this year,” said junior Angel Raja, who is Yearbook’s photo editor and media manager. “Although, I still had my doubts due to [COVID-19] and how much content we would be able to gather.”
In order to create content, Yearbook has added more creative and student culture-based ideas. They’ve also reached out to the students and student organizations they’ve featured for photos instead of taking pictures themselves.
“We are making up for the lack of traditional content, like dances and in-school events, [by] featuring more students for non-school related things,” Esposo said. “We added aspects like featuring students for businesses they have, talents or hobbies they have gained over quarantine, and class statistics.”
While the lack of events in the yearbook may be disappointing to some, it will surely be interesting to see more content focused on individual students.
“It’s a shame that we don’t get to feature such memorable events for our students this year, but that empty space has given us an opportunity to explore other ideas that couldn’t fit into the book before,” co-Design Editor senior Truc Tran said.
Not only have the contents in the yearbook changed this year, but the design elements are unlike anything seen before in previous years. This year, the yearbook has more sentimental elements to offer students a cozy ambiance.
“I’m really proud of the visual theme this year that [co-Design Editor] Thanh [Huynh] and I curated,” Tran said. “With things from earlier decades being trendy right now, I think people will really like the look of the book.”
With the participation of students in the various forms and messages sent out by Yearbook, the Yearbook staff is hoping to create a book that students will love and be able to feel personally involved with.
“My personal hope for our yearbook is that everything ties in together and that the students of our school are satisfied with how it turned out. After all, their opinions are also important,” Raja said.
