It’s the end of the school year. Everyone is going around and signing yearbooks, looking at the memories they’ve made over the past months. But some students may find that the only picture of them in the whole yearbook is their school picture.
These students may feel left out, watching as their more “popular” peers are plastered on every page, and they may wish that they were featured more in the yearbook. They may even feel entitled to be more prominent in the yearbook. They go to the same school as the “popular” kids too, why aren’t they as important?
The problem isn’t that these students are unimportant, it’s that they are uninvolved.
Giving every single student at a school an equal share of the yearbook would not only be very difficult from a design standpoint, but more importantly incredibly unfair to the students who go above and beyond to be a part of the school community.
Recognizing people who lay low all year and just try to go unnoticed instead of our school communities’ role models makes no sense. It’s like making a photo album of your family, but instead of highlighting all of the fun things you’ve done, you fill it with pictures of you just watching TV, not interacting with each other at all.
Thankfully, the Yearbook staff does a great job at making sure the whole student body is featured in the yearbook. They even have a goal to make sure that each student has at least three photos of them in the yearbook. If you still find yourself unsatisfied with your prominence in the yearbook, you can’t blame the yearbook staff. It’s your job to get involved in clubs and after school activities if you really want to be featured more.
The best way to have a bigger role in school culture is to go make it happen yourself, you can’t rely on the yearbook staff to chase you down to make sure you’re as featured as you want to be. So go to a couple clubs after school, join the band or a sports team, there are tons of ways to be involved in the school community.
I know that it can be hard to fit in after school activities while keeping up grades, working, or just trying to enjoy being a kid before adulthood hits, and that’s completely understandable. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on grades and your social life outside of school, but you can’t complain about not being in the yearbook if you aren’t active within the school community.
If you want to have more pictures in the yearbook, you don’t have to be popular, you just have to be present.
School is as fun and engaging as you want it to be, and every student has their own unique personality to offer that makes a school community diverse and welcoming for everyone. So don’t lay low and hide in the crowd, everyone here has so much to offer to this school outside of their academic ability, they just have to get a little involved to let it really shine through.
Not only does being involved at school help you get into the yearbook more, but it also makes memories that last a lifetime. Friends that you make in clubs and after school activities are some of the best friends you could ever ask for. So be the person to stand out and get involved, and who knows, maybe you’ll be the next person to inspire a new generation of students to be more active at school.
