October 8th 2020 – Julie CAS Journal Entry

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. Use your CAS experience to show how you have motivated yourself to do something for the community.

One accomplishment I have made throughout lockdown was completing the yearbook and still getting it to the families even though we weren’t at school. This is an accomplishment for me because when Jimena and I first took over the yearbook, we thought it was going to be pretty simple. We thought we would must make it with our team we met with weekly, order them and then distribute them at school, but this simple plan completely changed as we started to become affected by the virus. By the time school moved online we had only been taking photos and planning our process, so we still had a lot to do. Over spring break everything still seemed pretty normal as Jimena and I were just completing the portraits and getting used to the platform we were using. Towards the end of the project things started getting more difficult as our team members had lost most motivation and it was hard to get them to complete their pages. After a few weeks, we finally got them all to complete the pages.

Next Jimena and I moved onto fundraising. This was difficult as the majority of yearbook funds usually come from ads, but due to the pandemic many companies did not want to contribute. This made it very difficult for us to raise money, but after asking almost the whole community, we found some companies that were willing to donate. Probably the hardest part of this project was the delivery. Because no one was at school, Jimena and I brainstormed other ways we could get the yearbook to the families, especially those who couldn’t come to the school to pick it up. After meeting with Ms. Kerry we decided the most effective way would be to set times for people to come pick them up, and if they couldn’t Ms. Kerry offered to deliver. In the end, the yearbook was a success and even though we had many challenges, we were still able to get it done. This project taught me how to preserver when things or a crisis gets in the way. This project has also motivated me to start the yearbook early this year, so we can start to teach new members how to take it over once we graduate.