Most students attending Gig Harbor have nothing to do with Yearbook aside from the fact that their photo appears three to four times. However, the Yearbook staff works tremendously hard all year in order to produce a quality and remembered book. We try to collect as much information from exciting events as possible including Fishbowl, assemblies, dances, and other activities around the school. In your book you can also find intriguing interviews from our student body and featured articles. But what happens when we step behind the scenes of our Gig Harbor Yearbook, when we take a closer look on what goes on behind closed doors?

When you first walk in to Room 403 the hustle and bustle can be quite overwhelming. Students run around, shouting out what they need done and asking questions from across the classroom. People are constantly passing each other and running to other computers helping out their fellow staff members. The classroom is loud and seems extremely disorganized but in fact this is not the case. This student-run classroom is working in a very organized manner to meet deadlines and planning coverage for upcoming school activities. The constant yelling going on usually consists of questions like: “What page should I put this Grad Ad on,” “Is this week page almost finished,” and “What events are coming up?” There is always a plan of action behind every page.

Certain students have been selected by their peers to help run the classroom and keep the Yearbook on track. Senior Tanner Lear was selected in order to keep track of cameras and assign staff to events that needed to be photographed. This year he has done an amazing job with getting enough photos to cover an almost 400 page book. A freshman, Hadley Olson, stepped up to the plate and took control of every Grad Ad that came through the door, keeping track of what pages had been used and which Grad Ads still needed to be completed. We were all amazed at the tremendous effort and results that she produced. Our Photoshop editor, Mikayla Stewart (senior) helped out our photo editors by touching up our photos and designing cool images for pages. Of course there were students and staff from Newspaper, including Newspaper editor and senior Elyse Miyake, who were more than willing to help out from time to time.

Of course most students of Gig Harbor expect the yearbook to simply show up in their hands at the end of the year. Little of the student body notice the hard work and time commitment the yearbook holds. Though at the end of the day, our yearbook staff is proud of what they produce and hope the students enjoy it too.