Self-Analytical Essay
It was late nights like these that I wondered if I really wanted to do this. It was 8:00 P.M., and after a long Thursday block day of classes and a two hour freezing baseball practice with tons of running, I was beyond exhausted. Not to mention that every inch of my body was screaming for a scalding shower. I was still defrosting my fingers when I held down the Ctrl, Atl, and Delete keys on an old 2000’s mechanical keyboard on a black desk in NB5. Our deadline for the year was coming close, and I needed to make sure all two hundred and sixty-eight pages were going to be up to par. I was struggling. My mind was not on the awards (those would come later I would find out) but on finishing something hundreds of my peers, who were chucking out a large lump of cash, would come to enjoy and appreciate. With yearbooks, you’re creating an endless storybook of photos and stories that will live on way passed the school year. A yearbook is something special that people will pull out at twenty year high school reunions or take off their shelf to share with their kids and grand kids. It’s a legacy, and I was part of giving that to my peers, and it had to be good; it had to be perfect. And that is what kept me going until 1 A.M. that night, when I uploaded our staff’s final proofs completing the yearbook.
It’s that feeling that has kept me going for three years now. It all goes back to the very first work night I experienced as a staff member, and although I didn’t know it that time, it changed my life forever. As a young sophomore in high school, my whole life had been focused on sports. I was determined to play baseball in college, but that all changed, after my first late work night in September of that year. I was hooked immediately. The stories: putting last minute touches on a copy about DECA students setting up voting registration tables in the main lobby. The memories: laughing along as the editors karaoked in the front of the room to High School Musical songs. The success: watching my EIC hit send on the computer screen as 40 plus pages go onto the plant and screaming that we met our first deadline. Journalism had gotten me, and it was not letting go.
As I left that work night, I remember getting into my mom’s car, and before she could ask how it had gone, I was already going on and on about the events that night. Then, something very special clicked in my brain. I told her, that I loved what I was doing, and it was something I was going to do for the rest of my life. She nodded thinking it was a phase of excitement, but I felt something different. I had no idea of what was ahead and the amount of success I would endure and the memories I would create.
Journalism would take me places I would have never thought to travel. I’ve been to the NSPA and CSPA conferences in Orlando, Seattle, Dallas, New York, (and hopefully San Francisco), where I have typed pages of notes from speakers like Paul Ender, who shared specific design tips and tricks, or a man with a bow-tie named Jim Jordan, who talked about finding inspirations to help in design. I’ve spent multiple weekends over the summers at a journalism workshop up at the University of Colorado in Boulder, a school that I’ve admired since I was little, planning and leading staff in the development of a theme and concept of a yearbook. I would make my way around the state to cover football games in Loveland and Colorado Springs or stand on the hardwood floor of the Denver Nuggets court to take photos of our Unified and Boys and Girls Basketball teams competing for wins.
My good friend and co-editor-in-chief of the 2017 “Same As Its Never Been” yearbook told me at the end of last year that he wished he had another year, another shot as an EIC to make another yearbook. I was blessed to be the first student in my publication’s history to get a second shot and be EIC two years in a row. And I did nothing but take advantage of that. Over the summer, I read the yearbook page to page (for the hundredth time) and put post-it notes all over the pages with revisions and ideas to implement in the next volume. I worked with my staff to step away from the traditional chronological structure that we had in place and challenged us in doing an umbrella type coverage book. I created a digital media program with a purpose of giving the community live updates from sports events while posting photographs from the night to get people excited about our school and to hopefully buy the yearbook. I wanted to strengthen my relationships with staff members by including more time for us to do things as a staff like a big Holiday potluck party or rounds of putt-putt golf. I also wanted to strengthen relationships with other journalists in our community like Steve Smith, the local news reporter from The Brighton Blade, by helping cover school events with photos since he can’t be everywhere. Steve has already asked for students on staff that I think would be a good fit to help him when I have graduated.
Along the way, my work has been recognized. I remember walking into NB5 in September after lunch to begin yearbook class, and my adviser stopped me mid-sentence as he said he had an important announcement. He went on to say that NSPA announced earlier that day the finalist for Design of the Year in the yearbook category, and he turned the projector on and asked if I noticed any of the spreads. As I looked up, I couldn’t believe that my opening spread was on the screen. I was a national finalist. Me. The whole class clapped and congratulated me, and all I could do was try to get out of the spotlight quickly and get the class started on pages. The recognition was nice, but that’s not why I do journalism.
My friends, my family, and even my baseball coaches ask me, why do you do all the things that you do for the yearbook? I tell them very simply, why not? Journalism has made me constantly tell myself to trust the process and to continue to hold the vision. When a day has gone on long at baseball practice, I know that I can run after to the yearbook room and jump on a computer and tell stories about those students in our school that may not have a voice. When customers in the Target lines at my work aren’t the nicest people, I can head home and jump on my laptop and design my thoughts and ideas about stories and bring them to life visually. It became my outlet from all of the other things that make my life what it is today. The feedback I’ve received has not only changed me as a journalist but as a person. The stories of student’s that I’m able to tell make it all worth it. They don’t become just another student that fills the halls. They have a story, a story that needs to be shared and represent this time in our lives as high school students.
I’ll be forever grateful for the memories I’ve made, the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been, the stories I’ve heard that yearbook and journalism has allowed me to do. Most importantly, I’m thankful for the knowledge this whole journey has given me. You really never know what is going to happen, but I know one constant in my life, will always be journalism. I’ll always be able to tell the stories of people around the world in every which way possible. On that late night a year ago, after a long, cold night at 1 A.M. I could feel something incredible brewing in my brain. I was finally understanding that journalism is not only what I want to do for the rest of my life, but that I need to do journalism for the rest of my life. Journalism has changed my life, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Sincerely,
Will Satler
Will Satler 