Every year students debate about whether to get a yearbook or not. Some people think that it’s a waste of money. Others think that buying yearbooks are worth it for the high school memories.

In my opinion I think that it’s totally worth it if you buy a yearbook. Once you are older you are going to miss being in high school. Your yearbook will have all of your pictures, friends and much more to remind you of high school.

According to Newspaper.neisd.net, students should buy a yearbook because “it holds memories throughout someone’s high school experience, it is inexpensive when someone considers how long it can possibly last as a source of reflection, it will make future children laugh at how our generation looks compared to them, a yearbook can possibly last for 100 years or longer, a yearbook is considered a collectable since they only make a certain amount of them,” and much more.

Colonia High School has been making and selling yearbooks since 1967. This year, 2017 is the 50th anniversary of Colonia High School. The 50th yearbook is still on sale now for $100. According to Blog.treeing.com, yearbooks first started out with “a Boston photographer named George Warren who leveraged an advancement in photographic technology called the glass negative process to easily create many prints from one photograph.  Warren encouraged his student subjects to purchase multiple portraits, share them with each other and then turn those collections of portraits into professionally bound books.  The “Warren Yearbook” was born.  The National Museum of History in Washington D.C. has the 1860 Rutgers College Yearbook on display, an example of a Warren Yearbook.”

Over the years, yearbooks have changed and are continuing to change. It used to only be seniors in the yearbooks, but now most school yearbooks include all grades.

Ever since technology has changed and advanced, yearbooks have changed. According to Blog.treeing.com, “The next big shift in the history of the yearbook came in the early 1900s with the invention and adoption of the printing press.” After that the next biggest shift was “Between 1985 and 2008 an explosion of technology brought on massive changes in the yearbook’s history, like desktop publishing, digital printing, social media and the widespread adoption of digital photography.  The computer age disrupted almost every industry in the world including incremental improvements to the yearbook.”

I understand why some people wouldn’t want to buy a yearbook. They might think it’s too expensive or a waste of money. You don’t have to buy a yearbook every single year but at least buy one your senior year. It is your last year of high school. You don’t want to miss out on anything. You will probably regret it if you don’t buy one.