This school year’s yearbook has brought an entirely different experience than ever before due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as of Virginia Santiago, a sophomore at Westside who is a part of its yearbook staff.

The entire process of creating this school year’s yearbook is clearly more challenging, especially in terms of being able to obtain content, such as pictures and stories of students, in a virtual setting. Virginia had explained that the way that she acquires her content depends on a theme that may be given to her. For example, if she were to be doing a sports page, she would go to games and take pictures. However,  if she were assigned a student life theme, she would proceed to contact different students, ask them to do something related to the page’s theme, and for them to take a picture of themselves.

Additionally, inclusiveness seems to be a major component in any yearbook, which seems difficult in including a variety of people and stories with the given situation. Virginia had then claimed that this was such an important task because of the meaning of the yearbook. Yearbooks are meant to represent each year at Westside, whether it may be students’ first or last years. Each picture has a story behind it, giving others insight into the different experiences of students here at Westside. The more people to be included in the yearbook may lead to more possible sales since most people enjoy seeing themselves in them.

All in all, we should truly appreciate our amazing yearbook staff for all the hard work they have been doing to still manage to create a yearbook during a time like this. We can’t begin to imagine the stress that it may bring to the staff such as Virginia, which is why we can not seem to thank you all enough for all of our efforts.