When I imagine...

I have decided, while I sit here broiling in the RP office, that I should blog. It is nearing the middle of my third year on staff, and after being immersed in the world that surrounds the most award-winning college yearbook in the country, you would think I have some reflections. 

Guess what! I do.

Many of them center around how I would like to run my staff when I advise for a high school. Some general ideas, in the order that I think of them:

• Take my kids to conventions. And pre-covention etiquette dinners so I can teach them good manners for the trip.

• It is important to lie to the kids about deadlines. It is important to build in a little leeway for yourself, because things will happen, and high schoolers won't handle it nearly as well as the RP staff has.

• Have as extensive of an editing chain as possible. 

• Reward kids with dinners or movie nights or something at my house. It's important they see me out of school and they take time to relax and enjoy a job well done.

• Encourage positive peer pressure and student responsibility within the staff, so that kids feel they can and should speak up when something is not right.

• Goals.... and keeping them in focus and bringing them up constantly. Otherwise they're pointless.

• Deadline charts are awesome. Update them daily.

• Because the book will have a video and Web element, I want three people to go to every story. One photographer, and one team of a writer and videographer. Each "staff writer" (non-editor) on my staff will be a writer and videographer. Each video story will go through the same chain a written story would have to, except instead of a copy editor I will have a video editor.

• Recycle all that paper!

I know Anna and I have talked about more, but that's all I've got right now. :)