365 Days of Memories: A Behind-the-Scenes View of the Yearbook
Every year, a group of hard-working and imaginative students band together to create something magical: the yearbook. The yearbook is not just any book; it is an array of memories that incite nostalgia and unify Riverdale students from all grade levels. Through team pictures, class photos, and more, the yearbook captures an entire year full of memories in roughly 400 pages.
For the past nine years, Ms. Mary Ludemann, the yearbook’s faculty advisor, has experienced nothing but joy while working on the yearbook. “To me, the yearbook is like a love letter to the school. It’s just sort of like a fun way to remember what happened during the course of the year and to sort of represent everybody and everything as much as we can,” said Ms. Ludemann.
Preparation for the new edition begins in the spring of the previous school year, giving the yearbook staff almost an entire year to brainstorm, print, and polish.
“The timeline on the book is so interesting because it goes to the printer around spring break. And then we get the book at the end of May and then the beginning of June is when we hand it out to everybody,” explained Ms. Ludemann. She added, “The class, when we come back from spring break, isn’t working on the current yearbook because it’s done—it has been sent to the printer. So we immediately start thinking about the next year’s book.”
The first and arguably hardest step of making the yearbook is coming up with a theme. The yearbook crew brainstorms ideas and then meets with a designer who can bring them to life.
“All of us work with the designer....he’s designing in front of us while we’re...throwing ideas at him and we all come to a consensus, hopefully, of what we want it to look like. And then we go from there. We kind of brainstorm all of the ideas in the spring of...who wants to do this theme or that theme,” Ms. Ludemann lightheartedly elaborated.
Once a theme has been decided on, the yearbook staff, comprised of Middle and Upper School students, begins the process of transferring their vision onto paper. Senior Faith Adinyira, the yearbook’s senior editor, plays a crucial role in this process.
“I’m in charge of a lot of the senior sections, which means that I help Ms. Ludemann and the rest of the yearbook staff coordinate with Mr. Hager to get things like the senior portraits done.” This involves getting “people to do the senior profile form...send in their pictures for senior half-pages, and...[taking] our grade-wide picture on the steps outside of the cafeteria,” Adinyira described. “Along with that I also help organize advisory pictures for grades nine through twelve, Activity and Affinity pictures, and anything else that is outside of my senior section stuff that anyone needs help doing.”
Being a member of the yearbook committee for three years and the only senior on staff, Adinyira has watched the program flourish. “[The yearbook] is a tangible way to see how the community has changed over the course of the year and to just see what new things we have come up with, what has stayed the same, how people have grown up more or less, both teachers and students included,” Adinyira remarked.
Along with the high schoolers on the yearbook staff, fresh talent is abundant in the form of middle schoolers. Isabelle Hyun, an 8th-grade student on the committee, dedicates immense time and effort to the yearbook. Hyun not only loves seeing the finished product of the book but also enjoys the social aspect as well: “I get to meet new people, especially because this year there have been a lot of incoming sixth graders. I [also] get to meet teachers,” Isabelle stated. “When I...go up to [the teachers] and take their pictures for them it’s just really nice to see how they introduce themselves,” she added.
Immeasurable amounts of work go into the yearbook each year by students and faculty who often go unnoticed. So when the time comes, make sure to pick up a copy!
