Aldus Saved the Day

The first journalism class. It had 11 or 12 students. They were used to creating everything and laying it piece by piece on the spreads. They didn't like the new guy coming in and changing things. It was one of the first times I said, "We're going to do this my way."

We found a couple of old Macintosh computers, neither of which even had a hard drive. We had to load the PageMaker software every day and hope for the best. I eventually commandeered a couple of Gateway Computers from teachers who weren't using them (this being 1995) and got rolling. I used a bootlegged copy of PageMaker 4 or something like that on the Gateway and taught some basic techniques. I was self–taught on PM, so I taught them and they taught me more.

Luckily, I had some good editors and artists back in the day. By 1999, my last year as adviser, we were actually submitting digital photos instead of printing them and sending them in. Today, much — if not all — of the yearbook is done completely digitally. It's a whole different system now. If I look back today at those old Vestaburg yearbooks, I'm proud of all the hard work by many different students.

Some of them even ended up working in marketing!