Welcome back everyone!
Today I will be finishing up my yearbook camp coverage with a post about the last day of the four-day camp I attended at Chapman University with my school’s yearbook staff. I posted separately about my experiences during the first three days, so definitely go check those out if you haven’t already! The camp was extremely tiring but it was an amazing experience and it really allowed me to bond with the other members (both newbies like me and returners) since I knew no one except for my best friend, a returner, and one of my other best friends, a newbie like me.
Day 4 (Monday, July 22nd) had a school spirit/your school colors theme, so we were all decked out in our school gear. My school’s colors are orange and blue; I wore an orange t-shirt, navy blue shorts, orange and blue beaded necklaces, and the orange and blue cape from superhero day. Breakfast was scheduled for 30 minutes later than all the other days, so my roommate and I had set our alarms for 7:30 rather than 7:00. My roomie and I had packed up most of our stuff the night before, but we finished everything up before heading out to eat. I had waffles and scrambled eggs with a mini cinnamon muffin for breakfast, and then we headed to the common room to meet with all the other staff members. Our EICs showed us the finished theme packet that they had submitted the night before (it was BEAUTIFUL and so vibrant) and explained to us what was about to happen; we were going to go to one of the classrooms and three other schools would be there, the EICs of each school would present their theme packet to a panel of four judges and we would get critiqued.
We headed to the theme packet presentations- I was nervous and I wasn’t even doing anything! The other schools’ ideas were great, we went either second or third and I thought our EICs did a great job at presenting everything. The packet included a cover, a title page, end sheets (the very beginning and end pages), an opening page explaining the theme (aka theme copy), and four (maybe three?) spreads; this amount of work was based on how many staff members we had with us at the camp, so it was more than some other schools had to submit. We ended up getting critiqued very harshly by the judges but it was somewhat expected; they were known for being blunt, and we knew they may not like how much color and vibrancy we wanted to add since they were a fan of the simplistic style our school’s previous books had.
After all of the presentations were finished, it was time for the closing ceremony and awards presentation in Memorial Hall. We all walked over together- it was sad realizing this was our last camp event. The individual awards were presented as well as class awards and theme packet awards; two of our staff members got awards from their class instructors, but we didn’t receive a theme packet award. This was disappointing to the returning members and our adviser since our school had a reputation of getting some sort of theme award each year, but we understood the differences in what we put out and what the judges normally look for. We watched a slideshow put together by the camp workers and photography students of pictures from each day and event at camp; it was crazy to look back on the last few days and realize we were already going home.
The ceremony finished quickly after the slideshow was over and it was time to check out of our dorms and hit the road. My roomie and I said a final farewell to our cute little dorm and brought all our stuff to the common room where everyone else met up. We headed down together and dropped our keys in the dropbox, saying goodbye to Henley Hall. We had carpools set up for the drive home as well; I was in a car with two of our EICs and my friend. We just chatted the whole time about the camp and what was to come in the next year of yearbook. The drive was about two hours and we left at 12:30, so we arrived around 2:30 back at school. I said goodbye to everyone, and my mom was there to take me home. It felt soooo good to be back in my bed- I unintentionally took a nice nap before unpacking, eating, and beginning to catch up on emails and such.
Camp was an amazing bonding experience- our yearbook staff is like a family and I was surprised how quickly we all seemed to fit together. I fell in love with everything about it and I’m glad that I now have something about the upcoming school year to look forward to. I will definitely be posting yearbook updates throughout the year since it is going to be a big part of my life (and big time commitment!) from now on, so I hope you guys are interested. I highly recommend you join the yearbook at your school if it’s something you’ve been wanting to do- even if you have no experience, it’s easy to start learning. I’ll be back with new content soon- I’m leaving for cheer camp on Monday, and I’ll be posting about that at some point as well.
-Brooke
adventures of a typical high school student 