A Paperbound Time Capsule
![Showcasing last year’s yearbook page hinting at this year’s editor lineup, Editor-in-Chief Ryane Selvig, Co-Layout Editor Emma Rosales, Co-Layout Editor Emma Schell, and Copywriting Editor Brock Wilkosz [not pictured].](https://boisehighlights.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/IMG_9409-2.heic)
Photo Credit: Luiza Decenzi
Showcasing last year’s yearbook page hinting at this year’s editor lineup, Editor-in-Chief Ryane Selvig, Co-Layout Editor Emma Rosales, Co-Layout Editor Emma Schell, and Copywriting Editor Brock Wilkosz [not pictured].
April 22, 2021
This school year has been one to remember. Between online school, hybrid schedule, and in-person learning, we’ve experienced immense changes in our education and lifestyle. Years from now, The Courier, Boise High’s yearbook, will become a time capsule for our student body to look back and recount their high school experiences during this momentous pandemic.
When it comes to creating a book about student life during an academic year, it is already hard enough for yearbook staff to get pictures, interview students, write excerpts, and design pages making sure to include as many students as possible. This year, however, the virtual learning environment has made it even more difficult to produce such work online.
“We couldn’t call people down in-person which was pretty hard,” explained Emma Rosales, this year’s Co Layout Editor. “It was mostly asking someone else to Snapchat someone or finding their Instagram handle or trying to get a hold of them in any way, shape, or form.”
“We really had to find alternate pages because we couldn’t just take those pages out of the book and then only have a 70 page book,” Rosales explained. “During the summer, we came up with every single page… and with [them] we came up with an alternate idea.” Such alternatives come in place of events, such as Toga and Homecoming, as well as sports, such as the snowboarding team, normally covered in our yearbook but made impossible due to the widespread cancellations. In their place, pages such as music, quarantine cooking, or first person you want to hug have been featured by the editors.
“I think this [yearbook] was super important to depict…the new reality but [we] also wanted to make sure it wasn’t all about Covid and still [we were] trying to incorporate as much as we could of a normal year,” Emma Schell, Co-Layout Editor, imparted.
Creating this perspective and leading the class virtually has been a challenge for both the editors and yearbook staff. “We had to go through a lot of people and jump through a lot of hoops to get… exactly like their right information,” said Rosales. No question contacting students was made much more difficult. “Especially if people weren’t active on social media or if someone didn’t know them,” Schell disclosed.
Another challenge explained by Rosales was that this year’s staff, “didn’t have a lot of returners so most people who were doing it were new.”
To that, Schell added, “it is a lot harder to teach them that you need to write your questions out and then send it out instead of talking.” On the same note, Editor-in-Chief Ryane Selvig disclosed, “It is really hard because they just started getting used to the school, and… if they have to contact a senior, that can be a little nerve racking.”
Thankfully, the hardships were not long lived. “It [was] definitely more of a learning experience to accomplish a quality interview, to get across what you wanna get across on your page…but I think that everyone got a hang of it,” Schell revealed. “The kids that were struggling earlier so much better, and they are more self lead when we would have had to prompt them earlier.” The morale of the class, as described by Selvig, “improved throughout the year because everyone started to get more comfortable with everyone.”
Regarding the finished product, the three editors said in unison, “I’m happy. I’m proud. In the beginning of the summer…I had no idea what it was gonna look like, I had no idea how the year was going to go, so honestly, I’m super excited to just see it come out.”
“A lot of the book is very personal and I feel like everyone at Boise can relate to a lot of what’s going on,” Selvig expressed. “And if you really look at the book instead of just finding the pages that you are on…then you will totally see what we are going for with, through the theme, through the opening, through the closing, through the entire book, and like especially on the last page.”
On a final note, Rosales said “I will say that I think that you will most likely see yourself in this yearbook. It was very inclusive this year.” That will surely be the case for many considering the wide variety of photo opportunities given to Boise High students outside of the usual school sponsored activities. Be sure to order your copy of this new and historic yearbook through the BHS Webstore before it’s too late!
