Yearbook, You Are My Everest

I'm a teacher.

I grade papers, scold bad behaviors, and use more wipeboard markers in a year than most of you will use in your lifetime.

It's pretty standard. I'm basically what you imagine your average language arts instructor to be.

Cardigan, slacks, bun - a great love of novels like The Great Gatsby and an affinity for office supplies like Post-Its.

However, there is one key difference: I also teach high-school journalism.

Which means I advise the school yearbook.

The year-ending, piece-of-history, overpriced-and-yet-treasured article of high-school memorabilia that every teenager carts around under their arm, along with a handful of Sharpies, for the last few weeks of the school year.

I get to be in charge of that.

Or, rather, I got my job because I was willing to be in charge of that.

Because no one - no one! - wants to be the high-school yearbook adviser.

It's the bear and the black sheep of the high-school organization family.

It's the unloved, red-headed step-child in the world of extracurricular activities.

It's the ugly puppy in the litter, my friends.

Why? you ask. Why does no one want to be in charge of the school yearbook? After all, it's a coveted piece of student history that adolescents treasure into adulthood. Who wouldn't want the task of creating that memory with impressionable teens?

Because creating that memory with impressionable teens takes up more time than all the rest of my job put together.

I'm not even sure how to define how all-encompassing it is, other than to tell you that 20 kids and I put together a 240-page book that encapsulates the year and shows each of our 1,100 school's students at least three times, while also remaining politically correct and public-relations friendly.

Which also means that my 20 students are in charge of photographing every sports game, club meeting, and school dance we have. Which also means we run school Picture Day. Which also means we run senior-superlative voting. Which also means we sell advertising to local businesses and students to fund the book (which costs more to print, by the way, than four of my car combined.) Which also means I sell approximately 500 yearbooks to a variety of students, teachers and parents. Which also means I field phone calls and e-mails from parents county-wide inquiring about whether or not their precious Jane or Johnny is in the book at least 15 times because "after all, they're the most popular kid at that school. The deserve it."

Which also means I've worked nights, weekends, and national holidays just to finish certain deadlines in order to make sure that the school I work for wasn't slapped with a thousand-dollar fine if we submitted some pages a day or two late.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm doing all this with a bunch of 15-16 year olds?

Yeah. Not so fun.

I get text messages, phone calls, and panicked voicemails at 1 a.m. from my students working on the book.

I've stayed at school till midnight, changing fonts, editing captions, and removing obscenities from copy before submitting a portion of the pages just in the nick of time.

I've comforted crying students who missed their deadline; I've cried from the pressure of it all myself.

I've used bribery, grade penalties, and phone calls home to intimidate my students into "getting the job done."

I even yelled at a kid last week. (And I never, ever yell.)

I've made myself sick from the stress of it; I've lost hair, my voice, my sanity doing this job.

More often than not, it's been a nightmare.

But, as of midnight last night....

...I'm done.

The nightmare is over.

This year's yearbook is finished. Complete. Finito.

The dragon has been slayed.

The hardest part of my job has ended.

The yearbook is done.

Please excuse me while I dance around my classroom wildly, screaming at the top of my lunges and fist-pumping better than any rebel NCAA football player who contantly gets penalized for "excessive celebration."

We're done, my friends, we're done!

Truth be told, when I hit "Submit" on the final pages last night, a few tears fell. From my eyes. From my students eyes. From the precipitating air-conditioner, which we'd blasted to freezing temperatures to keep us alert as we approached the final stretch.

Much like childbirth, I look back over the last six, painful months, and wonder, "I don't even know how we just did that. I don't even know how we finished 240 pages of photography and stories and quotes and graphics and teeny, tiny errors that we pray no one else will see but us."

Because after all, I've done this before. And while it gets easier every year, it's never fun. It's always, always painful.

So I must block out the pain. Just like birthing babies, no one would want push out more than one yearbook in their life if they truly remembered how horrific the process really is when you're in the middle of it.

Black-outs and memory loss: It's the only way to survive.

It's the only way to do this monstrous project more than once.

It's also the only reason I feel slightly bittersweet that this is the last time I'll be doing it here.

But never fear. I'm not bittersweet enough to let it ruin this moment for me.

This moment, which, it has to be said, probably means more to me than it means to the kids.

Because now I can relax on weekends, sleep more than four hours a night, and start growing back my full head of hair.

Huzzah!

I've conquered my Everest, people.

The yearbook is finished.

Let the excessive celebration begin.

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Hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday!