By Kaylan Kha
Editor in Chief
“Narwhals, narwhals, swimming in the ocean,” the yearbook staff sang cheerily, as their eyes remained glued to the computer screens, completely immersed in their work. Narwhals, Narwhals is the fourth Ash- á-Wut supergroup. Headed by design editor Hannah Wong and team leaders sophomore Jasmine Tran and junior Serena Trang, the Narwhals work relentlessly from May to February to capture the highlights of the school year. The team also includes seniors Samantha Mendoza and Alice Shen, junior Lucy Ho, and freshman Samuel Valencia.

Every month, the staff convenes to pitch ideas and decide the stories to be covered by each team. The Narwhals are responsible for spreads that are assigned to them by the editor team. As the design editor, Wong is tasked with laying out and checking the spreads the group finishes. She had to troubleshoot the new Edesign program many times when she first started using it, but eventually figured it out.

“It took longer to do each spread,” Wong stated. “I’ve been working with Indesign since seventh grade, so I was really familiar with it. Edesign is [different] and I’m still learning.” For the Narwhals, the real difficulty comes not from designing, but rather, from gathering all the components for a spread. Creating the yearbook requires a collective effort from photographers, editors, and the rest of the students. The Narwhals tell photographers what shots they need and find students to interview for information.
“The hardest thing […] is when some of the pictures we need aren’t exactly what we want or when we send someone a call slip and they don’t come,” Tran explained. “Then, we have to find someone else [and it makes it harder] to finish in time.”

The Narwhals all agree that meeting deadlines can be stressful, but the satisfaction of finishing the yearbook is even greater. “Everything happens really quick,” Trang shared, “so we try our best to be productive and get [it] all done as soon as possible. It’s a team effort.”