Sublime

When thinking of what to write for this week’s topic “feeling the sublime” I was a little concerned that I had never felt anything that could account for this, but after reading a few other people’s posts I decided that instead of having to write about something scary or horrifying, I could write about something joyful, something that made me so overwhelmingly happy and free.

My senior year in high school I was a member of my school’s yearbook staff. Now I’m sure you’re thinking that this can’t possibly be exciting, at all, and could be nowhere near to sublime, but wait, it gets better. I had been on the yearbook staff the previous year, but my senior year, I was a veteran. I had pull, and experience, I knew what worked and what didn’t. I hadn’t been there as long as my friend Stacey (who had a year on me), but I was one of only 6 returning members, so those 6 of us were in charge. We had lost the teacher we had had the year before to another job and we were all skeptical and frightened of who the new teacher could possibly be. I remember sitting in that dusty, cluttered classroom at 11:47am waiting for the new teacher to arrive and our fate to be decided. The room was full of new kids, quiet and reserved, all seated in the back, almost scared to death of the 6 of us that had formed an unbreakable bond with each other the year before. I was surrounded in the front by the rest of the veterans, and a few senior friends of mine that had decided to give the class a shot. Ten minutes after meeting the new teacher half the class wanted to quit, starting with the 6 of us that had already dedicated a year of our lives (two in Stacey’s case) to the cause, and we weren’t ready to just throw away all our hard work for nothing.

Okay okay, so now I’ll get to the point of the story…

We worked hard; harder than I’ve ever worked my entire life. We came to school two hours early, stayed four hours late; ate vending machine food and had Pete (our faithful night-shift janitor) “leave the lights on for us” on more than one occasion. We took over the floors of the hallway with our ladders and spreads, and massive amounts of other school’s yearbooks. There were lots of second period Physics classes spent rushing through my assignments so that I could get to the yearbook room and work. Many a seventh period AP-Honors British Literature class skipped in order to make a deadline, many a lunch spent eating a slice of pizza in between moving pictures and rewriting quotes. Every teacher at Hermitage High School hated us by the first semester was over, if not because we were often seen dancing in the halls to “Cyclone” in the middle of fifth period (who knew that was a distraction to World History I and US Government?) or from yanking kids out of class because we needed a quote, a picture, or just needed something. We fought with ourselves, and oh man did we fight with each other?! There were doors slammed, things broken, and tears were cried. But through all of it, we never stopped working. By the end of the year, we were like one big family (or at least most of us were) and there wasn’t much we weren’t capable of doing, as long as we worked together. We stayed up late, had group lunches, and even travelled to the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s annual yearbook conference at Columbia University in New York City. For a few of us on the trip it was our first time flying, and for some, their first time in New York. Many new friendships were formed, some were broken, but in the end we conquered what everyone else had said was impossible: taking a staff of 6 veterans, 13 newcomers, and a teacher who had never done this before, and turning them into a staff. A staff who overcame all of our differences, though it took up until a few days before the final proofs were sent in to do so, and who produced a book that no one thought they could.

The sublime part of this story: the day of reckoning, fee night the following year: the day our yearbooks were released. When I opened the book for the first time I felt an overwhelming rush of emotion. Not only because it was my SENIOR yearbook, but also because I knew that I had helped make this. I had put in hours of hard work, sweat, and tears into that book. I had fought with friends, I had grown closer to friends, I had done things I told myself I would never do. I was ecstatic with the end result, and was so proud of myself and my fellow staff members that it was probably scary. I felt free. Free because for once in my life I had something tangible to hold in front of myself that showed that I had done a good job. Something that meant more than a goal in soccer, would be seen by more people than my 3rd grade report grade that contained all A’s, and did a wonderful job of summing up the best year of life I had experienced thus far.