It was two o clock on a Thursday morning, and while every other student of University High school was fast asleep, the UHSpress staff was wide awake, their rooms littered with empty coffee cups, desperate to stay awake and finish their projects, due the very next day.

“When I stayed up with the other staff until 2 o’clock in the morning, true colors started showing, and we all became comfortable talking with each other about personal things, which really helped our teamwork throughout camp,” photo editor Cierra Stark said.

In late July, the Walsworth yearbook company put on a summer journalism workshop in Orlando, which the UHSPress team used to hone their craft and improve the quality of all content they put out.

“I came to camp to get a bouncing off point for our yearbook theme,” yearbook editor-in-chief Camille McNairy said. “Seeing what the other schools can come up with visually and verbally really helps us to find a new way to approach the book for this year.”

With every new year, the editor spots that were filled by seniors are taken by new people, who were coming into a leadership role for the first time.

“Honestly, it’s kind of scary,” index manager Haley Smith said. “But, at the same time, I learned somuch about being a better leader and how to manage a team from this camp.”

The classes ranged from leadership oriented team-building exercises, to classes centered on designing with Adobe InDesign, and there were classes focused on the writing aspect of journalism.

“Everybody has different needs, and the way this camp is set up, everybody can find a class to help them and our products the absolute best they can be,” digital media editor-in-chief Sam Neely said.

However, the whole camp wasn’t just classes and busywork. “There was plenty of fun stuff to do in addition to grinding out the work,”  Neely said. “From a lip-sync battle where we did a song from Grease, to the time we had to bond with our other people on staff, this camp is going to be one of the major reasons that this year’s book is going to be as good as it is.”

The staff worked hard every day of this past week to ensure that their future content would be at its peak.

“We’re not just satisfied with good anymore,” McNairy said. “We’re not going to be satisfied until we make an award-winning book worthy of being noticed. And just you wait, it’s coming real soon.”