Scandia’s staff strives to create a lasting impact on Inglemoor culture while providing the environment and tools necessary to foster the growth of student journalists. This year, the team was credited with publishing one of the four best yearbooks in Washington for their 2018-2019 book, Nothing Personal. Scandia received the Emerald Award at J-Day West on Sept. 21, a Washington-based journalism conference focused on initiating and evolving the journalistic growth of local students.
“We produce a good book every year, but I’m especially proud of the book we produced last year. It was really nice to have that outside opinion give us validation and say that Nothing Personal was an amazing accomplishment,” senior and co-editor-in-chief Carmen Truffat said.
Aside from receiving the Emerald Award, Scandia has also been recognized on the local and national level for photography, caption writing, layout and graphic design.
“Over the past year, Scandia has gotten many major awards including last year when we won a lot of awards in Anaheim at the National Journalism Convention. It was cool to see our teammates get recognized for their hard work and skills,” junior Tenny Larsen said.
Members say their collective success is a result of the social and collaborative environment that they strive to create through team-bonding. This bonding includes a mentor system and fun activities.
“Scandia is so much fun, and we’re successful because we’re all so close. I guess that’s what happens when you spend hours upon hours in the same classroom,” junior Missy Okamoto said. “We are a very communicative group of people, and we’re able to bounce ideas off each other. Because we’re all close to each other, we’re also able to tell people if we believe something can be better.”
While the final book is known for succeeding in competitions and accurately reflecting Inglemoor’s student body, Scandia struggles with meeting deadlines.
“We have a deadline every month where a section of the book is due to our publisher, so the workload is divided into sections, which makes it more manageable. The process involves getting interviews and photos, then designing the pages before the deadline,” Okamoto said. “Time management and meeting deadlines is a huge issue in Scandia. It’s because we have to gather all the content ourselves.”
In order to meet their deadlines and further develop their time management skills, the team and its editors have developed an organized process and vision.
“I think the biggest part about being an editor is making sure the book looks consistent and coherent throughout while carrying the theme from the cover all the way through the very last page. I think what we spend most of our time doing is refining what that vision for the book is and how we use different elements and processes throughout the year,” Truffat said.
The team’s productive and encouraging environment not only ensures success for the yearbook, but also lessens the pressures of their deadlines.
“I think Scandia works because we’re efficient and organized, but it’s also because we have a lot of fun while we’re working. It’s important to have that balance, and it’s what makes the class fun and the work more doable. For example, we have 8 hour late nights, but we’re still able to have fun,” Larsen said. “During late nights, we have a tradition that at 10 p.m. we all stop and blast the song “Dancing Queen”; we even have a disco ball and glow sticks.”
In the end, the yearbook staff said they hope to create a lasting impact on the student body.
“I just feel like the book is like a little time capsule. It’s everything that happens over an entire year captured into something that students can take home and look over whenever they want,” junior and co-editor-in-chief Rhiannon Rogers said.
The students are not only credited with putting out a competitively successful book, they’re also credited with embodying what it means to be passionate journalists by their adviser.
“I’ve gotta say, it’s very impressive that the students on Scandia are doing the work because they believe in it. They’re not doing it for a grade, they’re not doing it for points—it’s not even a discussion that happens in this classroom—it’s all about the work that they put into it,” Scandia adviser Zane Mills said. “It’s very surprising, it’s impressive and it’s honestly humbling as their adviser to see that they’re working to carry out a vision that they truly believe in for the student body.”
