Completely Stressed.

Hello to all,
I am as the title of this says, "Completely Stressed." Why you ask? Well, I am juggling 15credit hours, 17.5 hours of work and the Yearbook rests on my shoulders. I would be more relaxed if the pages of the yearbook were made. However, Gwen the Herff Jones representative is busy with her own schedule and can't make it over to Piedmont for another week! Everything seems to be at a stand-still for the yearbook. Now, let me back things up and tell you what has been happening...

I moved in Aug. 8th into Mayflower. This may sound minute and totally unrelated to yearbook but it has everything to do with it. All seniors are meant to move in on Aug. 11 but I had to move in early due to the Freshmen. Every year, Freshmen move in on a Sunday and I am responsible for taking all the pictures during the day and at the end of the day usually around 4pm or so I have to climb on top of the Congregational Circle wall and take a group picture of all the incoming Freshmen... what joy.

Ok, so Sunday was move in. On Monday, a whole new list of activities was planned such as a ropes course, alcohol awareness class, library tour and a skit to put the "cherry on top." The ropes course is always fun and that's where I get the best pictures. They make the Freshmen participate because it teaches them to work as a team. Each year I get pictures of them swinging on ropes and balancing as they run across a narrow board.

The skits this year were the same as in the past. It's not the fault of the Freshmen because they base it on their first few days at Piedmont which, for most are a culture shock. I did get a lot of great pictures since I had a sports lens on the D-60 Nikon that the Mass Comm Dept purchased. It works wonderfully and has become my baby. I take it everywhere.

Finished? Not quite.

DVC emailed me wondering the status of the yearbook. The flyers are complete, the ladder is complete but the total design of the yearbook is at a standstill until I have his input on the design concept of the book. Gwen and I picked out the colors this summer however I am having second thoughts about the colors I chose. We will see. In Athens news, Aaron got back to me with a layout he created. It looks nice however I hopehe didn't pull all of the elements from online because then he would need to start all over. Help me.

Your Mary Beth

Accomplished.

Hello Beautiful People,

I hope you are having a wonderful day. Let me see... I finished the ladder. Well, kinda. You see I have one problem with the yearbook ladder, I have five blank pages! The first blank page is about 5 pages in and I can't seem to assign anything to the page that would make sense. OOooo! I think I just had an appiphany. This book will be the 90th edition of the Yonahian yearbook so I can do a commemorative page. Thank you for your help! The other 4 pages are towards the end of the book. I may allot those to senior announcements from parents sending well wishes. I'm not quite sure yet. Another thing I accomplished was to name 122 Freshmen students. Now, this sounds like an easy task. However, I had to download all these pictures in order and then go into my picture files and re-name every single one. The only problems were that some people would sign their name and I couldn't read it. So, on some of them I had to guess what it said and when I get back to school I will have to cross reference it with a student registry. The other problem was that my computer under "my pictures" would randomly swap pictures so they would end up with the wrong name with the photo. This happened to me last year and it was a nightmare. I had to figure out who was who on the Athens Campus and I had never seen these people before. Now I need to scan every single signature, 122 to be exact and darken them with my snazy Bamboo (pictured above) and then put them on a layout for the yearbook. This will take me forever!

New Venture

Hi Everyone!

Now, I know this may be a little off topic but I have to tell you of my new venture. I have what's called an Etsy site. This site is where you buy and sell everything homemade. My online shop is called Tucked Away Treasures; "Because sometimes it's right under your nose." I have posted buttons and vintage keys. The reason I am telling you about this is because I am trying to market myself. Blogspot and Facebook are one way of doin that however, Etsy allows me to make items and market myself that way. I am really excited for the future of my new little online shop.

Check out my site mwilliams0208.etsy.com

OR

Scroll to the bottom of my blog it shows everything I sell on Etsy.

More Dedication

Let's see... I just spent the rest of my day putting the final touches on the ladder. Now, I have everything in order except for the fact that I have five blank, un-assigned pages for the yearbook and I can't think of what to put on them. I have some ideas. I would really like to devote them to parents writing well-wishes to them for graduation. Another option would be to give Athens more pages but I don't think that would be such a good idea.

I will finish this up my battery is almost dead.
Your Mary Beth

Ok, so check this out... I am giving you exclusive access to a potential page in the yearbook. You know the show "The Office" right? Well, I am trying to take on that theme and execute it throughout the book. This layout took over five hours to create each element was either handmade or modified by myself. I want each page to have great detail so if you take a look, you will notice the paper clip on the left-hand side of the page in which I drew. The red patch on the page was also created using my trusty Bamboo. I will have to show you a picture of it in another post. Basically, it is a smartboard and whatever I draw on the board it shows up on my screen.

In other news, I called The University of Georgia and they said I could take either the Thesis or Non-Thesis program. The Non-Thesis includes 11 courses and an exam. The Thesis program includes 9 courses and a Thesis paper. I usually test poorly so that would be reason to take the Thesis program. However, I really don't want to write a huge thesis paper and do poorly on it. I'm not sure what to do...

Stay Beautiful,

Your Mary Beth

Workin, Workin for others not for dough...

Hello everyone.

It's me again just to fill you in on the progress of the yearbook. Let's see, since I forgot to blog yesterday I will tell you what I did. Thankfully I have all of last year's flyers and club information kept neatly in  a file on my computer so I re-designed a flyer for the new year of prospective yearbook helpers. It took me about an hour or so to make a questionnaire, a "what I expect" paper outlining what needs to be accomplished for this year and what the title of the yearbook is and what it's about. Also, I have been working and hashing out things with the ladder. Now, in your mind you're thinking ladder as in a thing you use to climb. However, this ladder is created by me and describes what will be on every page of the yearbook. Seems simple right? WRONG! The tricky part comes with the intro or the Introduction. The intro is three pages which throws off the pagination of the entire book. I have to make sure there are enough single pages and spreads. To speak "human" a single page is just like it sounds one full page in the yearbook and a spread is two pages facing one another (a page on the left and a page on the right that are on the same subject). Well the ladder has gone up in flames I usually do everything in Microsoft Excel but this time I decided to organize everything in a planner. Bad decision because now I have to enter it all in the computer and re-hash it all out again since it's not working out the way it needs to be. On top of that I have to organize and plan for Athens which is another school on its own. Even though they are a satellite school, their information is still put in out book and now that an Athens advisor has been appointed for yearbook they want to make their own pages and send them to me which is completely ridiculous because they couldn't even get pictures to me on time last year. We will see what happens. I am not letting go of my reigns that easily.

Till next time

Your Mary Beth