emily watkins
2016-2017
self-analytical evaluation This year I have developed an entirely new set of skills and responsibilities, further allowing me to learn and understand a new part of the yearbook hierarchy. I ordinarily wanted to be the content editor or another editor that was in charge of more important design elements and played a more important role in the creation of the yearbook. But not even half way through the school year I learned that the team leaders are not only the most under appreciated members of the class but the most important. Without the team leaders there would be no content in the book, we find the stories and mods and further create them, the editors are just in charge of submitting the pages and making the book look pretty. Now that is important as well, I am not in any case hating on the editors, but they would not be able to do their jobs unless ours is complete. Therefore this semester I have learned the leadership skills of running a team, the management and organization of keeping a team in line for deadline, and the process of creating a spread. The production skill is completely based on organization and staying on top of things for me. For example in the first deadline, I fell into the habit of last year and waited to the last minute to complete my work, but in the end my pages we’re done and designed to the best they could, but it was much more stressful than it needed to be. As another example, deadline two, we had half the time to complete twice as many spreads. After learning from my previous mistakes I pulled my act together and had the most done out of the other teams on deadline night. Speaking of deadlines I learned what I learn everyday deadline night, I should start planning and getting interviews or “conversations� done in advance for a less stressful experience. After spending sixteen hours on deadline two I realized that I needed to take that much more seriously. Although I spent as much as time as I did, that deadline my team member Tess participated the best quality and effort into the information she presented. For example, in deadline one Tess was
afraid to do interviews by herself but after some word said, the team was unified and work got completed. I feel journalism ethics are always important, I will not lie, I have tweaked interviews and stories before, but I try to remain honest in telling the truth. I mean, everyone has, but I always type interviews word for word and manipulate stories the best I can to suit the quotes. My overall reflection on myself would be pretty good, I have completely changed since last year and I believe for the better. I am more confident in myself and what I creativing, so that only benefits the yearbook. Although, I faced many problems, such as the difficulty creating my team so that we all work uniformly and together. From this I learned how to communicate so that everyone understands and I let my team members decide which stories and mods they want to do so they are more interested in what they are writing. My greatest weakness for publications will always be managing my time so that deadline night comes easily and is the least stressful it needs to be. In order to overcome this weakness next semester and beyond that, the best way would be new sheets that allow great detail for each mod or story, the binders are pointless and instead members should just turn it into the basket.
Over the two years of participating in yearbook, I have not been proud of too much things I have created or done, I do not think much of it like that, more of a job well done or not. And that is based on pages as a whole. Therefore, the thing I am proudest of this semester, has been pages 38-39 and 88-89. They are two spreads that I believe not only show most of my design ideas and stories and mods. Overall, on these pages I did the most, on pages 38-39, I did the quiz, photostrip on zoology, and mod on Mr. Marri. On pages, 88-89, I wrote the main story, I did the photo strip, and playbook mod. But I’ve got to say the proudest thing I did was the quiz on pages 38-39, it cause lots of problems, but it turned out clever, funny, and better than I expected. The quiz was very difficult to create, first off because it was on the topic of math class, it shared a spread with science so the entire page was not that interesting, so this quiz was my only hope to make the spread pop. I started with the idea of doing a quiz leading to the math class people were currently taking, but there were too many classes. I completely created a quiz that was disorganized and clustered, but to my luck, well not at the time, the entire spread got deleted and did not save so I had to start over. As I was recreating the quiz I recognized how bad it was and decided to change the angle to which way people thought, geometrically or algebraically. Those were two out of the three outcomes, the third outcome was a funny one, that led to a question asking, “do you know what y=mx+b” and it led to “do you even take math.” Many people that took the test and thought that a funny response, which made me feel better about what I thought looked terrible. Those thoughts changed as I finished it and put it on the page, I liked it so much because I took it multiply times with different answers and got the correct response. My boyfriend for the correct response for himself and everyone else that took it as well. I also liked the little interviews around it that not only get more people in it but makes it look pretty. The design team did not change anything which also made me feel good.
reflection #1
reflection #2 The next thing I am proud of this semester is my main story on the p.e./ health pages, 40 and 41. I am proud of the process of this story because it was very difficult to start with having to wait until the last minute for photos and only having a limited amount of time to take the photos. My story was on the video, “Life’s Greatest Miracle,” which is about the process of childbirth and watching a baby being born. This story was exciting to write because of the humor of it all, I watched the video freshman year, still all insecure and it did not make me feel any better. The main photo is hilarious and the same with the story, with the angle of the boys you had to watch a baby being born and their initial reactions of the whole process.
Another story I am proud of is my football main story on 88 and 89, it was my first story this year that I had to write about the first girl in years to join the football team, therefore it is a story to show how awesome girls are. This put a lot of pressure on me because I knew I needed to get good interviews and had to write an even better story. Being the first thing I had to right in such a long time, it was difficult to get back in the groove of things. But I am glad it was the first thing I had to do right after getting back because I was able to write it and make it worth something in the yearbook that could not be written about any other year.
The last thing I am proud of is the layout of pages 10 and 11, it is the homecoming spread that is basically all pictures of the after school events, Monday through Thursday. These pages were the most fun to create because no one of my team really had to write anything, other than a couple of quotes from people in pictures. The most difficult thing with this spread, although it look appealing, it was a mess trying to find photos for each event and the way the photos should be layout on the spread. Although the design team changed some of the way the pictures were organized, I was still proud because of how appealing it looked and the amount of fun and non stressful it was to create that page in the yearbook.
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