A new yearbook project has taken the hearts of students in and out of the class: stickers, collages, drawings, and photos scattered through pages of DIY journals, each unique to the person crafting them. Some students went down the path of a more scrapbook-like journal, others decided to go down the route of a drawing journal. Students are given complete creativity liberty to create something worth bringing home to be proud of. 

I personally choose to take this assignment and create a scrapbook of my senior year. I first chose to dedicate a page to the era I was in when entering my senior year. The opening bag is decorated with photos, art, letters, and wrappers that I saved throughout the end of summer. Then from there I go in chronological order with the months. I challenged myself on each spread to assemble one 3-D element. 

Each spread of two pages takes around a week to make. Much of my free time is spent in the pages of my scrapbook. Many of my nights are spent leaning over my desk gluing, water coloring, and writing. I would say hours of work are being put into this book and I’m excited to be able to have a timeline of events that encapsulated the memories, emotions, and thoughts that came with trying to get through that last stretch of schooling. 

This assignment though would have not been possible without Ms. Turk’s creative ideas and mentorship throughout the book creation process. She told me that never in a million years she would believe kids would be this “into the project.” I’ve also, in the back of my mind, wanted some way of preserving an era of time, and this physical layout of pages and collections that I will be able to look back at for many years to come is perfect.