Don't answer letters like this from teenagers. They have boring, retarded problems. No one cares about your freaking yearbook.

No one cares about your freaking yearbook.

Wrong. Replace "yearbook staff" with "programming team" and "faculty advisor" with "project manager" and you have one of the most common workplace gripes.

If you get all of these slackers because your school allows you to skip out of a class period to work on the yearbook, just close that hole and change policy. Or, even more cagily, have your advisor make a lot of noise about changing the policy, scare off the freeloaders, and then revert back to the old policy. Problem solved.

...as she inspects her nails, checks her cell for the 1000th time today to see if she has any texts or voice mails, looks around to see what her best friend, Chimichanga, is wearing, and breathes a huge sigh of relief that she can spend all of her "yearbook" class time surfing the web, instead of actually working on that like totally bee-yoring yearbook, like, duh, it's so ill.

This advice was smart and practical. In situations like this one, you have to ask yourself how people want to feel about themselves. The director wants to feel like he is in control, and he wants to feel like a competent decision maker. When you ask to choose the staff, you are implying that you will do a better job, which offends the director's image of himself.

Likewise, you might use the same strategy when you deal with the slackers on your staff, as there will undoubtably be some slackers no matter what. Think about how those students like to think about themselves. They might see themselves as super cool, above it all, superior in their apathy. Or, they might hope to contribute something but lack the skills. Some staff members might decide they are too cool to work, when really they are insecure about their abilities.

As their leader, it's your responsibility to get these people to produce a yearbook. If you let out frustrated sighs whenever they screw up, they will resent you and work even less. Somehow, you have to encourage their efforts -- when they do something right, make sure you praise their accomplishments. In time, staff members may begin to think of themselves as someone who is really good at layout, or who takes good pictures.

Most people have a desire to be perceived as competent and good at something, no matter how apathetic they act. It's tempting to write off your classmates as idiots, but it's simply not the best way to get work done. If they perceive your frustration, and your negative opinion of them, you are in for a rough year.

Good luck -- as Maxwell Smart pointed out, many adults deal with this exact same problem in the workplace. Your experience on yearbook will help you in college, and in the real world.

Or, even more cagily, have your advisor make a lot of noise about changing the policy, scare off the freeloaders, and then revert back to the old policy. Problem solved.

Love it!!

"But the basic idea is to remember that in this situation and in similar situations, your director is not there to make you happy. The job is not there to make you happy. You are there to make everyone else happy. If you proceed with that objective, chances are your request will at least get a fair hearing."

This is such good advice, not just for teenagers but for anyone in any work situation. It's easy to get frustrated at work (or yearbook class), start to hate your job, your coworkers, and your boss, and generally begin resenting that they are doing this to you - making your life miserable. Causing you to dread getting up in the morning. Ruining Sunday because you dread Monday SO MUCH.

You can probably tell that I know that feeling.

Anyway, Cary's advice on changing your perspective really is good - not only to achieve positive change, but also to avoid being labeled an attitude problem. Unfortunately, once you get that label, you have to climb a lot farther and over rockier terrain to ever be taken seriously again. And, with Cary's advice you might also be able to avoid some sort of confrontation whereby your boss/yearbook advisor utters the words, "well if you don't like it we'll find someone else who is willing to do the job. See ya."

This may just be the nature of the beast for yearbooks and their staff. Though I never was part of the yearbook staff, I seem to recall people complaining about this sort of thing back when I was in high school, and we're talking 30 years ago.

One thing that was different from what you describe, though, is at my school, the people involved with the yearbook were the cool kids, and the yearbook was suspiciously filled mostly with pictures of them and all their friends, many of whom weren't even seniors. The photographers, at least, seemed to be keen on participating.

To augment Cary's advice slightly, I suggest that you try to assemble some kids who you think would do a good job -- even just a couple people would make a big difference (one photographer who you think would have fun with that task, and one ad person who is good at charming sponsors).

Ask them to join the staff and just ADD them to the people already there who aren't doing anything. This way, you have a couple people you can depend on, and the rest don't matter. Maybe the slackers will even be inspired to do something if they see the photographer, in particular, having influence on who gets their pic in there -- immortalized forever as representing the class of 2006, or whatever. Competition can be a great motivator.

Frankly I'm surprised that none of the current group have an interest in, at the least, taking pictures. That seems to me like the fun part. Recently I've had friends who have been involved in community programs where kids who normally wouldn't have access to cameras were given the equipment to make a photographic record of their lives. They went out and shot photos of their neighborhood, family, friends. The pictures were really powerful.

There's no harm in trying at least one motivating speech for the less-inclined on your so-called team -- you could ask them to see themselves as documentarians of a moment in time, a la Nan Goldin or Martin Scorcese or Walker Evans. Garry Winogrand. Annie Liebowitz. There are so many incredible photographers out there who might inspire your crew. What an amazing thing to have the task of documenting the phenomenon that is your school in this year in our culture. You are making your time capsule!

In the end, too, you also may have to realize that your standards are higher than the people around you. As someone on one of my first jobs used to say to me when I was discouraged: "You like to work, that's a good thing. Not too many people like to work. It will serve you well in the professional world."