Welcome back to Letters From The Editors. If you haven’t noticed, it’s Homecoming week. We’ve been planning for this for a few weeks now, but nothing could’ve prepared us for it actually happening. Now that Homecoming week is almost over, we figured we could tell you about how hectic it’s been for us.

Last week, we (Jena) decided to create a spreadsheet for Homecoming coverage. It included the week’s events, ranging from hallway decorating on Sunday to the Homecoming dance the following Saturday. One would think that an organized spreadsheet would mean everyone would know exactly what they’re doing and when, no questions asked, but that wasn’t the case. After assigning reporters and photographers to events, we also had to assign staffers to live tweet from events. On top of it all, a few of our photographers had to back out of coverage at the last minute, and finding people to fill in at a moment’s notice proved to be even more difficult than planning coverage was to begin with.

For the past few years, Mill Valley News has put on a photo booth during Homecoming week, allowing students to get their pictures taken while wearing that day’s spirit wear. This may be fun for the participating students, but it’s actually a lot of work for our photographers. (They have fun too, though.) Not only do they have to get to school early and take a bunch of people’s pictures, they also download their pictures, crop them and post them to the web — all before the end of the school day. Thankfully, our photogs did an awesome job with the photo booth and it ran fairly smoothly. Although we love having a photo booth, we were pretty glad to be able to take down the backdrop for it yesterday now that it’s over, as keeping up with who was taking, cropping and uploading photos was a job in and of itself.

Wednesday was by far the most hectic day of Homecoming week. Float decorating took place directly after school, and from there we had the parade and pep rally, keeping most students on school ground until around 8 p.m. Though it sounded ideal to have several photogs stay for all three events, it wasn’t realistic due to homework and other commitments. So, we separately assigned photogs to all three events, but, thankfully, a few staffers overlapped and were able to stay for more than one event.

It would have been nice to focus all our efforts on Homecoming coverage this week, but that wasn’t possible. We also had staff members reporting on sports games and school news this week, and that meant we had to edit and post their stories as well. To add to our stress, we had our first long work night on Monday, where we stayed at school until 8 p.m. to finish the first issue of the newspaper. This foreshadowed the hectic week we were about to have, and led to us losing even more sleep this week (but it’ll totally be worth it when we distribute the first issue of the JagWire next Tuesday).

Needless to say, it’s been quite the week. While we wouldn’t trade the experience of being behind this year’s Homecoming coverage, we’re definitely going to feel some relief when that last photo gallery from Saturday’s dance is posted. And, afterward, we’ll just be waiting for that four-day weekend and the relaxation that comes with it.

Lessons of the week:

J-Curt: Jena definitely took the lead in planning Homecoming coverage this week. As someone who likes to be in control and know what’s going on, this week taught me how to divide and conquer. Having Jena there to do a lot of the behind-the-scenes work for our coverage this week saved me a lot of stress, and I’m super glad she helped as much as she did.

Jena: Though I’ve learned this lesson time and time again, I somehow managed to learn the hard way that sleep is vital. For everyone, it’s a known fact that sleep is vital. For me, 7-9 hours a night is vital. Without those precious hours, I turn into some scary combination of a zombie and a cranky soccer mom (though I have no children, I live with an ex-soccer momma and I know what it entails). Sleep for me often needs to take precedence over homework and Mill Valley News commitments because, without it, I can’t physically do what I do and do it well.

That’s all … for now.

Seniors Justin “J-Curt” Curto and Jena Smith are the editors-in-chief of Mill Valley News online. They appreciate captioned photos, categorized and tagged stories, staff members who don’t text about web assignments at 11 p.m., teachers and students who talk about things they read on Mill Valley News and all things multimedia.