My medical school didn’t have an official yearbook.
For this reason, one of the students in our class, let’s call her Donna,
decided to lead us in creating a yearbook. We all wanted a yearbook, so
everyone was very eager. I myself dedicated a lot of my time to help
work on the pictures and the design. We also sold advertising space to
local businesses and a lot of people’s family members bought ad space to
congratulate the graduates.
When graduation came, Donna told us that the yearbooks were not ready,
in part because it significant number of people had not paid for them on
time. So she didn’t have enough money and they missed the publishers
deadline.
Over the next year or two, we got intermittent updates from Donna about
the publishing process and had to keep giving her updated mailing
addresses for when the book was finally ready.
It is now over a decade later, and I still have not received the yearbook that I worked hard on and spent $50 for.
At this point, I’m not going to make a thing of it. Donna is my Facebook
friend, but not actual friend, and I can’t imagine bringing that up to
her. And sadly, I’ve not really kept in touch with any of my med school
friends. So I suppose it’s possible some people did get the yearbook
and it was actually printed. But the last time I asked somebody about
it, which was years after graduation, nobody had.
So I have to wonder, what happened to all the money? I mean, we are
probably talking about $10,000 or so. Where are our yearbooks?? I
don’t even want it that much at this point, but I’m just curious what
happened!
And, for that matter, were Donna's med school loans paid off quicker than other grads?
ReplyDeleteSadly, it barely makes a dent.
DeleteThat's a lot of money to go unaccounted for; friend or not, Donna owes your entire class an explanation as well as refunds.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but I would feel REALLY weird messaging her after 10+ year and being like, hey, where's our yearbook and where's my $50?? Maybe it really did get sent out and I never got it because I moved.
DeleteThis happened in my med school too!
ReplyDeleteIf you think there's a possibility that the yearbook genuinely got made, why not reach out to her and see if she still has an extra copy floating around that she can send you? Explain that you moved and you've been wondering if yours just never reached you. And if she says it never got made, ask if she still has and can pass on to you digital copies of whatever she did manage-- that way, you could print your own if you wanted to.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the money goes... I would probably try to go on the belief that she didn't collect anything like $10,000, and work on letting it go. She may have had a lot of people who said they would get one but who didn't pay the money. And ditto for the would-be advertisers. Maybe try to look at the $50 you paid and didn't get refunded as the cost of several years worth of her periodically not paying for coffee when you both got some or something. I'm suggesting this mainly because it's so far in the past that there isn't a remedy. I tend to be happier when I focus on letting that stuff go whenever I think about it.
(Mind you, if you do want to ask for a copy or the files, you may want to wait until the current medical school yearbook scandal has been out of the news for a while. Mainly because she may be hesitant to get embroiled in something that we're seeing could become a Thing.)