Upon hearing that “major changes” would be implemented to the 2014 yearbook, seniors moaned in misery, reliving the mishaps of last year’s yearbook. However, the yearbook staff has developed a new vision for the yearbook and plans to implement improvements, ones that will change the culture of yearbook at Carlsbad.

This past month, a few of the yearbook students attended a national convention and received positive feedback with some suggestions to improve their work. Wanting to make the yearbook more multipurpose, the yearbook editors have decided to add more writing.

“A lot of the things are the same,” junior yearbook editor Raya Klooster said.  “We are doing senior quotes and Lancer Laurels. I know people were kind of nervous that we were getting rid of those, but we have both of them. We are also adding a lot more writing into the book this year. This will help the students remember what everything was like. There are stories on sports teams, clubs, band, classes, dance and anything you can think of so we will be able to hold more memories instead of  just having pictures.”

Carlsbad High’s yearbooks have always been lengthy due to the large school population.  To make it easier for the reader, the editors will incorporate indicators to easily find portions of the book.

“We are having a reference section which is where all the team pictures are going to go, so they do not take away from the objective of the club or sport groups,” senior yearbook editor Elisse Kunin said. “We are also adding an index, so students can easily find the section they are looking for.”

In addition, the staff plans to be more ambitious with the yearbook’s coverage. The staff will work until the end of the year to include events like prom and graduation.

“We are also doing a supplement,” Klooster said. “So at the end of the year, after we have to turn in the book in April, we normally cannot include prom and graduation because it is past our deadline. This year, we are creating a 15-page supplement, composed of spring and senior activities and will continue to work on it through the last day of school.”

The free supplement will be mailed to graduated seniors and available to returning students when school resumes in Aug. and will glue into the book as if it was part of the original book.

These changes have sprouted from the desire to make the yearbook more journalistic without sacrificing practicality or tradition.

“We are completely changing the culture of this yearbook,” junior yearbook editor Georgi Gnubius said. “In the past, our captions were not up to par, the pictures were not clear and everything was lower quality than it could be. The kids do not know there were supposed to be stories, so we are going to incorporate them. People are going to get these books and are going to be blown away, simply because of the improvements through the captions, stories and pictures.”

With a fresh school year, the yearbook staff is determined to create a cleaner result and to focus on telling the story of the 2013-2014 school year.

“We should be writing stories; it is the story of the school,”  Gnibus said. “It should be unique to our school and specific to this year. We want to explain the differences of Carlsbad class of 2014.”