After five work nights where they stayed up at the school until around 11 p.m., hundreds of hours, thousands of pictures and plenty of frustrating moments, the yearbook has been finished and sent off to publisher company, Balfour. They currently cost $65 but will go up to $70 on May 2nd if any books are still available.

“It’s a great experience because all the staff members get to see the book in a physical form,” junior assistant editor Christian Mouton said. “With all their hard work, pain and suffering going into this book, we have stressed about it so much and we went through so many things to make it. It’s great to have it in a physical form so everyone can appreciate it.”

This year’s theme is We Are Leander. The book’s theme was decided on during the yearbook summer camp by the staff. Their inspiration was with the new school, Tom Glenn High School, opening, they wanted to make the statement that our school was the first built and express what it really is.

“We wanted to emphasize that we are Leander, we are Leander High School, the first high school in Leander ISD, the original, the start of this district,” Mouton said. “So we wanted to go back to our roots and express, not how special we are, but how significant Leander High School is to this community.”

Last year’s book won a Gold Medal from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and are a national sample book for Balfour Publishing, an honor given to only the top 3% of books in the nation that they publish.

“It was hard from the beginning because everyone was learning, but they picked it up really fast and I think a lot of that was daily things and getting caught up on a lot of stuff,” senior editor-in-chief Autumn Corbin said. “New ideas [have helped], a lot of the girls have very ‘Pinteresty’ minds and have contributed a lot of fresh ideas.”

Students can still order their yearbook online at www.balfour.com, or they can bring a check/cash to Mrs. Bell in Room 2320. The staff will also be selling them at lunches the first week of May.

“Most people think yearbook staffers just go around school and take pictures, but the yearbook is full of writing, creativity and design,” yearbook adviser Mrs. Bell said. “Everything about this yearbook is the student’s’ ideas and concepts and we love our school, so we take a lot of pride in our work. We want everyone to love it because we spent 10 months making it.”