As a yearbook staffer, there is one day of the school year that is anticipated: distribution day.
“It’s the day that everybody waits for,” ads editor and team leader Kat Jones said. “Everything you’ve done up to that point is culminating in this one, giant day. Your excitement level is just going up throughout the week and once you get to Friday, you’re like AAAHHHH!”
This year, for the Blue Valley Southwest yearbook staff (the Vision), distribution unluckily happened to fall on Friday, May 13th.
“I wasn’t really nervous, because we’re not exactly superstitious people,” Jones said. “I think I actually told somebody that Friday the 13th is actually very lucky – people just want you to think that it’s not lucky, but in reality it is.”
For this year, distribution day began in the same place the yearbook was produced all year long: room 118. Locked in the back room of the classroom, the boxes of yearbooks had to be counted, sorted and moved to their correct location. The first batch of yearbooks – to be given to the seniors – had to be moved out of the building, to a school van parked in the teacher’s parking lot, to be taken to Leawood City Park and the senior picnic. Once the yearbook girls arrived at Leawood City Park, decisions had to be made about how best to distribute the books.
“[Giving them the books out of the back of the van] was a lot more convenient than setting up a table on one of the picnic tables,” Jones said. “We didn’t have to use the dolly and move two billion pounds of books up a big hill.”
The yearbook staff arrived early to the picnic in order to set up. By the time seniors started to arrive, the van had been set up to hand out books and the girls were ready. The plan was that seniors would bring the piece of paper they had been given two days before, stating their name and that they had purchased a yearbook; the only problem is that most seniors forgot to bring that piece of paper with them to the picnic.
Yearbook adviser Heather Lawrenz was ready for this complication, armed with a list of the senior class and those who had purchased books ahead of time on the side of the van.
“Not surprised, was my reaction,” Lawrenz said. “That’s why I brought the master list – I knew it would happen. I think it was manageable, and I don’t think it’ll happen as much next year.
Seniors who went to Lawrenz’s side of the van received their yearbooks from her.
The seniors who did remember to bring their cards allowed the girls the opportunity to physically pass off their hard work all year to the people they did it for.
“Overall, it went pretty smoothly,” editor-in-chief Tess Constant said. “We were scared that we lost twenty books, but they were just in the van – so, tragedy averted. Everybody got a book that was supposed to.”
Before they arrived at Leawood City Park, the girls devised a plan for their departure: the picnic began at 10 a.m., and the van would pull out of the parking lot at 11:30 a.m., giving the seniors an hour and a half to pick up their books. By the time 11:30 rolled around, the girls were very cold and very ready to leave the picnic.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to.
Several seniors arrived very late to the picnic and chased after the van as it was leaving the parking lot. Fortunately for them, the yearbook staff is merciful and turned the van around, at the expense of the embarrassing beeps that accompany putting the vehicle in reverse.
“It was their last chance to be with that group of seniors and sign books,” Constant said. “We didn’t want them to go home without a book and without signatures – it’s their senior year.”
The latecomers included two yearbook members.
“They wanted the books badly enough to chase after the van, so they wanted them pretty badly,” Jones said. “That was partly the reason we turned around.”
Finally, after the latecomers received their books, the girls were able to leave Leawood City Park and headed to On The Border to celebrate the successful distribution of the first round of yearbooks.
Next year, Jones, the 2011-2012 editor-in-chief, envisions a change in the system.
“Next year, we’ll have a different system besides the cards,” she said. “I feel like it was really chaotic and crazy. Half the people lost their cards, so it was slightly pointless. Next year will be better and hopefully we’ll be able to order more yearbooks to sell, because people aren’t smart enough to buy them at the beginning of the year when they cost $15 less.”
