Yearbook Pictures

Do you remember 1983? I do. It was the year I graduated from Manti High School and from Snow College. Crafty was writing an outline for the speech she has to give tomorrow in her Public Speaking class and she asked me for a picture of when I was in college. I suggested that any of my senior pics would work, but she wanted something different. That's when I remembered the yearbook.

Let me explain a little better.

When I was in high school, it was not like it is now. People who wanted to try to take college classes could still take a few concurrently, but it was only a handful. If you were hoping to earn a degree, it was nearly impossible.

I took classes before my regular schedule for high school started and I also took classes afterward. I've told you before, with 8 kids on a teacher's salary, my parents didn't have money for me to go to school, so I applied for and received an Academic scholarship that covered my tuition. Yes, while I was still in high school. They don't do that anymore.

But I also received another scholarship, a stipend based on working on the Snowdrift, the school newspaper, and that would help cover all my books and fees. It had a few stings attached, like I had to take Journalism and I had to be actively assisting with the paper. I chose to embrace this requirement and I eventually became the Feature Editor as well as a reporter.

And that is what I remembered. We had a pretty good-sized spread in the college yearbook. I want you to notice a couple of things about this picture. First, I am the 4th one down from the top in the pics of the kids on the stairs. Yeah, the one with the goofy tie. If you notice, that was actually quite common.

Second, in that top pic of the girl on the phone? That thing she is working on is called a "typewriter." Totally archaic now, but back then it was the only thing we had that could put letters for us automatically on the page. Computers were not yet in the hands of the masses, not even for working on the paper.

Third, that picture right under that is me with a phone to my ear. Totally staged. We never fell asleep on the job. We were rarely even in those offices. We typically put together our ideas, scheduled our interviews, and then typed up our stories at home. Only the Editor of the entire paper put in much time in that office until the paper was nearly ready to go to print. Then it was all hands on deck until the proofs were checked, approved, and sent off to the printer.

Then we started over on the next issue. I actually really enjoyed my time on the paper. I also worked on a local paper, but that was only as a reporter and I never got to see the entire process until I was at Snow.