Stupid yearbook... to care or not to care?

Date: 22 Oct, 2001


A few years back, I believe that was senior college, our president announced the yearbook staff. Now correct me if I am wrong here, but aren’t you suppose to volunteer for such a job? Anyways, I was surprised to hear my name on the list, they told the class I was the asst. art editor. So okay, I had like no other choice but to shrug my shoulders. I mean all I had to do was come up with some “artistic ideas” right? That was the first assumption that led to my present-day grave.

Two summers went by with no one bothering to finish the yearbook. Sure they called meetings but to discuss what? If you ask me, they called meetings in order to discuss how we could top the previous meetings’ uselessness. In any case, two stupid summers went by and all we had was an unfinished yearbook. No one wanted to take responsibility for it. If you ask me, it is just a case of bad management. Anyways, people kept asking me how the yearbook was going and well, dammit, I thought, someone has got to care for this yearbook. Someone has to take responsibility. That was the second thought that led me to my present-day grave.

So I volunteered to do the job. The funny/exasperating thing when I got the zip diskette , I found out that every file had been erased. Kaput. Nowhere to be found. So what could I do but to redo the whole yearbook? DO you know how tiring that stupid job could be? But again, what could I do, I just told myself that I volunteered for the job and that I am to face the music. So anyways, I hired someone good to help me with the yearbook. He works for a local government official. I hired him at the height of political campaigns. Actually I begged him, hired would imply he needed the job, begged is more appropriate. We would work in his office until midnight. He didn’t want us to work much later as he feared for both our lives. (Since he worked for a govt official, it was inevitable that he received death threats for breakfast… the office where we work is not that safe). Imagine, I would go home late, riding a motorcycle just for that yearbook. So I finished the yearbook. Still, there were some missing pages because the “most efficient yearbook staff of the whole wide universe” failed to send it to me. Overall, I learned how to beg, how to maximize finances, how to pull everything just to finish that yearbook. Come end of this summer, i presented the work to the lay-out artists, who basically did nothing but to sit on their butts and I don’t know. They told me that they had to put in some revisions, and I told them to revise those things they deemed necessary. One semester. They had the files, they had the hard copy, and they did nothing. They did not even numbered the pictures.

Last night, I received a phone call from my editor telling me all about it. She told me we were again having another meeting. I wanted to ask if we were to meet about the recent APEC conference and the consequence of the WTC bombings and anthrax scare. Actually the meeting will be about how to make a mountain out of a mole hill and how we are to sit in one circle and do nothing. I wanted to wring her neck. I wanted to wring all the other yearbook staffers’ neck. Incompetence should be a crime. Fortunately she was on the other side of the line and I could not do that. She told me that there were some corrections and they encircled it already. Wow. Big help. Whoopee. She cant correct it because she doesn’t know how to use the program. I don’t think that is true. Damn it. I also did not know how to use those programs but I took a crash course on them. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to learn one of them. If you have the will, there will always be a way. If you don’t have a will, there are plenty of excuses. So anyways, this boss of mine told me that I should be the one to call the meeting so that we could revise it. I call the meeting? I call the meeting?!!! For what? So I could better be acquainted with their laziness? No thank you very much. First things first. They are friends of mine but I am afraid that if I call a meeting, I would say the things that I ought to say and regret it for the rest of my life. I just feel like I am doing something that I shouldn’t be doing. Someone else is not doing their job and damn it. Just damn it.

I would just like to say I don’t care anymore but damn it, I care about that stupid annual. Our classmates placed their trust on us and well I just cant do the things I want to do without regarding the consequences. They should be tried for stupidity. They should be tried for laziness. Arrrrrgggghhhh!