CAS keeps right on trucking

Exam period has just wrapped up, so recently time for CAS activities has been tight, and time for blogging about them even more so. Still, even if exams have put a slight damper on my regular posting, I've still had a lot of action (and creativity and service) going on lately on the CAS front. I'll save my progress reports on newspaper and ringette for later posts, and dedicate this one to the latest developments with our yearbook committee. Administration has completely vetoed our hopes of getting the book released in June. It's immensely frustrating, since it is difficult to change things and make the book better when we're supposed to be in control yet someone else is holding the reins, but I guess this is one thing I will just have to let go. It really took a toll on my and Jessica's spirits, though; we'd really hoped to be able to move past an outdated tradition and start a new chapter. But, we can't dwell. If we do dwell on this issue, then we won't get anything done. I just hope we won't have to bend our vision even further to jump through these political hoops. In terms of actual, positive progress, we've formed a yearbook committee, which is great. There is one boy on it that was part of the old committee and keeps insisting that the way they used to do things is the 'proper' way to make a yearbook, and there are a couple of grade twelves who think that their seniority means they should get to call all the shots, but despite such issues I think the committee is quite strong and we'll be able to get a lot done. Jess and I have already taken some pictures of the field hockey team and gotten team lists from the sports coordinators, and we're currently looking into getting a list of all upcoming school events to make a yearbook calendar. Getting photos is currently our top priority, since layout can be done at any point, but you can't take photos of an event retroactively. Still, I'm hoping to be able to have a good discussion with the committee about layout next meeting, with ideas for pages and content that we can get the school involved with and make the yearbook full of memories and uniqueness. We've decided to potentially hold an art contest to select a cover for the book, and Adrian is taking charge of creating a social media page for students to submit their photos for yearbook consideration, so overall I can already feel our changes taking shape. We plan on getting inserts for the book that people can get signed at the end of the year, so we don't have to give up our signing-books dream entirely, so that's also a plus. My next steps are to create the yearbook calendar I mentioned previously, and also take photographs for Movember and Spirit Week, so all in all things on the yearbook front feel altogether quite manageable. There have been some speedbumps, sure, and there's bound to be more, but for now I think we've got things under control.