Looking down at their typed up to-do list, made by Ms. Sarah-Anne Lanman, publication adviser, Paragon discusses and splits up the assignments amongst the staff members to finalize the last 44 pages of this year’s yearbook. These pages, which include the winter sports pages and the index, are to be completed by Paragon’s final deadline March 4. Throughout this year, Paragon has met four other deadlines which breaks up the total 176 pages of the yearbook.
“I would say that this last deadline is probably my favorite, even though it is the most stressful of all of the deadlines,” Viv Rodriguez, senior, said. “I think that this deadline should be smooth sailing if everyone plays their part and is efficient with their work.”
However, this year, Paragon has had to make some adjustments to their process with a small staff of five members. They have sent out more email surveys, relied more on Crier photographers and submitted photos and have received extra help from Ms. Lanman.
“It’s super difficult with the restraint of not having enough hands on deck, especially since most of the time, there is always someone absent amongst us few on staff,” Viv said. “Ms. Lanman always types up what exactly we need to be working on and what we need to have on our spreads, and I feel that that really helps me focus on what exactly my task is at hand.”
When Ms. Lanman was a senior in 2005, the Paragon staff was smaller than this year’s. She has observed many similarities between her experience on that staff to this year’s staff.
“There were the four of us on staff who essentially ran the show,” Ms. Lanman said. “It was difficult at times to get pictures with the few of us, and it was also a very different time with technology and our process. However, it was all about student choice and creativity, and it still is. It’s about serving as a documentation of history for future students to look back at that year and see ‘what was happening’ and ‘what was interesting’ at that time. The yearbook staff has to pay extra attention to what matters most.
As Paragon documents this year, they chose a theme for the book that best reflects the year. With many changes, such as a block schedule, and new teachers and staff, they chose the theme “So what’s your story?” This theme also caters to the small Paragon staff.
“The problem was because we didn’t have many people on staff, we didn’t know how we would be able to cover everything about all the different lives and changes in the school,” Armani Bearden, senior, said. “We knew we would rely a lot on submitted photos and information so we thought, ‘why don’t we just let everyone tell their own story.”
