As deadlines are quickly approaching, Elizabeth Pellicane’s Journalism students are racing against the clock to make edits to finalize the yearbook. Every year, the Journalism students are assigned the task of capturing the year’s memories in just around 160 pages as a part of their curriculum.
“My class follows a very loose curriculum that changes depending on the number of Journalism classes I currently have, our yearly theme, and any important events we would like to cover. However, we are always tasked with the job of creating and editing the yearbook. Because we are a news organization, I like to keep things very fluid so we are able to react to events that may come up,” said Pellicane.
While this may seem easy, editing the yearbook comes with the challenges of trying to capture important moments, making sure all students are included, and finding pictures that capture key memories.
Although editing the yearbook may seem like an easy way to pass time and fill one’s schedule, many difficult things go into creating the yearbook. Students are constantly working to collect pictures, interview students, and make corrections on their pages. Some of the main ways the students collect the resources needed to craft a yearbook are through Instagram polls, in-person interviews, and images sent in by students. The yearbook editors–including the 2025 editors Katie Bond and River McMillian–oversee this process.
There are many ways the editors receive information and images, but it can still be hard to find exactly what they are looking for to make their pages memorable. As a yearbook editor, you are expected to find the best representations for the topic of your pages. This can be difficult if the student body isn’t participating in polls or responding to the questions asked by editors. Reaching out directly to individual students can help lessen this issue, but editors can be more efficient when the answers come to them instead of having to go looking for resources.
“Student participation makes our job easier because we do not have to go into panic mode to swap people in and out of the book,” said Journalism student Carson Johnston, who will be joining River McMillian and Molly Cook as one of next year’s yearbook editors.
Students look at the yearbook as a way to look back and reminisce about the events of the school year. While this is the main purpose of the yearbook, many people don’t realize the amount of work that goes into making sure everything captures the memories created by students.
Along with the editing process also comes the advertising and selling stages. FCHS offers multiple pre-orders for yearbooks before the final ordering deadlines are announced; however, as the deadlines get closer, prices rise. These extensions and price changes are designed to help motivate students to order their yearbook early by offering many different opportunities to place orders.
Yearbooks will be approved, printed, and then sent to the school after graduation (in order to include that event in the 2025 yearbook) and then distributed to this year’s seniors at the end of summer break. Underclassmen will be able to pick up their books the first week of the 2026 school year.
Order deadlines are approaching quickly, so those who still want to pre-order a book should do so as soon as possible at jostensyearbooks.com.
