Before the crack of dawn, the yearbook and PhotoJournalism staffs huddle outside LHS wrapped in blankets and hugging pillows while struggling to wake up. Every year these groups hop on a bus to pick up the yearbooks. The journey consists of traveling to the historic town of Marceline, Missouri, 40 minutes outside of Chillicothe, where the yearbook publishing company is located.

   “Marceline is in the middle of nowhere,” Co-Editor-in-Chief junior Kinsley Manns said. “It stands out because the Walsworth plant is really big, compared to the really small town. Their staple restaurant is a Pizza Hut. It’s the birthplace of Walt Disney, which is cool.”

   The visit and tour of the plant has a large effect on the students, not only mentally, but physically.

   “It’s very sensory-overwhelming,” Manns said. “It smells really stong of ink.  A lot of people get headaches because the smell is so strong from the printing presses. It’s really loud so it’s hard to hear what people say because you constantly have different machines going at different times. You have the printing presses, the thing that fold the books and the saws that cut the covers.”

   The classes take a tour of the plant and get to see the production of several other schools’ books. They learn the process of how the books are made and meet the team of men and women who work to put the whole thing together.

   “Someone from Walsworth shows us how a book gets from a document on a computer, to a book people will have for the rest of their lives,” Manns said. “As we walk through the plant, someone describes every detail of the process. When we tour, we have the opportunity to see other books going through the same process ours did. It’s always interesting to see other school’s ideas and designs.”

   Junior Alyssa Stein, Editor-in-Chief of the PhotoJournalism class, said the company is very important to them.

   “The company is awesome,” Stein said. “Walsworth is a very big yearbook company, so Liberty High School is like a very a small fish in a big pond because they represent so many schools. Since they help with so many yearbooks, we have a lot to learn from them.”

   The staff members are excited for the introduction of this year’s yearbook to the student body. The theme is ‘As One’ and is very different from last year’s edition of the book. Some members of the staff collectively agreed this year’s book could be seen as better overall.

   Senior Olivia Maberry agrees that this year is special compared to past editions she has worked on.

   “I think this year’s yearbook is going to be a lot better than last years’ because we’ve grown so much,” Maberry said. “We’re all proud of what we created because it is so different than most of the other books that we’ve had.”

   The student body rarely sees all the work, time and detailed planning that goes into producing the book.

   Newcomer on staff freshman Sam Martin explained the process for designing the pages, writing the stories and taking photos.

   “We have deadlines throughout the year and we get assigned certain things within these deadlines,” Martin said. “We’re assigned a spread (two pages) or two and a partner, then we have three to four weeks to finish it. It’s mainly just going out to get interviews, writing a story, creating our sidebars and submitting photo requests while designing the actual page. We also have deadline nights and we’re usually here pretty late trying to get work done.”

   The trip overall fun for everyone who attends and is looked forward to by many. Editors and photographers alike look forward to this final reveal moment of the book and look forward to it every year.

   “I think it is super important for my yearbook students to see how many people are involved in the process of

creating our yearbook,” yearbook advisor Jessica Cordonier said. “It gives them a much deeper understanding of the way our deadlines affect people’s livelihoods.”

   The students in each class learn about the nature of deadlines in the real world and become more accustomed to the importance of having work done.

   Sophomore Niyahet Salih is continuing her second year in yearbook and couldn’t be happier. The thing that her and many others look forward to is spending time with peers and admiring their work.

   “Getting the chance to eat Pizza Hut and have fun with all my classmates is definitely a favorite,” Salih said. “Overall I love the experience, it just feels like the all the stress and time put into the book is worth it in the end.”

   Besides the exploration of a new place and the rewards of a finished product, the outcome of the experience is an exceptional one.

   “We take the class on this trip so we can all understand how our books are physically made and how much work people put into making them,” Manns said. “Yearbook’s such a hard class because you don’t see the reward until the very end of the year. It all comes together in that moment and it’s so great.”

   While picking up the yearbooks is a big event, the actual, literal, heavy lifting picking up of the books to travel back to Liberty is a whole other ordeal.

   “We’ll all grab our books and they are so heavy,” Manns said. “These boxes feel like tons. It’s so hard to get it from underneath, so we’ll have to push it up against something, we all look so crazy. When we get done we have bruises on our arms from lifting these heavy boxes.”

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