For those of you who haven't heard the '96-'97 yearbook, Under Construction, is now available for pickup at the Information Center in the first floor of the Nicholson Commons. Now the smug jokes begin anew about how our '97-'98 yearbooks actually beat the '96-'97 yearbooks into distribution.

        I don't think we should think about it like that. It carries the implication that the staff is responsible for the delays. While serving on a certain council that I was once affiliated with, I got to hear about some of the problems that struck this publication, and the curse of Murphy was certainly on this publication. (Murphy's Law: Whatever can go wrong, will.)

        With all this going on, personally, I would not have blamed '96-'97 editor Jen McShane and the rest of the yearbook staff for chucking the project and trying to apologize and walk away.  Sticking to this, no matter how long it took, and no matter what happened is something that, in my book (actually, in my column, but why quibble?), earns a lot of respect.

        That being said, when I opened the yearbook, I was blown away. Last time I talked about all those cool seniors I knew that graduated, and there they were again. It started me thinking.  Did I really need a yearbook at the end of a year, or close to the beginning? We don't sign yearbooks, thinking that's too high-schoolish for us sophisticated collegiates, and I really don't need to see pictures of the people whom I just spent an entire year of school with. I still remember what they look
like.

        A yearbook is for the memories, years down the line. I much prefer having a quality (nary a spelling error to be found, so far) work that I don't just tend to look at once and say "Oh yeah, I was at school with those people this year" and keep on my far-too-crowded bookshelf for the rest of its life, I want something that can take me back to the glory days. Maybe we should have these kind of delays all the time.