Looking for a Unique Yearbook Motto? A Teacher’s Guide To Personal, Meaningful Choices
The bell just rang for after-school dismissal yesterday, and I was shoving a stack of ungraded essays into my tote bag when Lila, an 11th grader I advise for student council, leaned against my classroom doorframe, one strap of her canvas backpack slipping off her shoulder. She held her phone out toward me, screen open to a messy group chat full of meme replies and typing notifications. “Everyone’s supposed to turn in a personal motto for the yearbook this week,” she said, sighing. “All the good quotes are taken. What do I even put?”
I get this question at least a dozen times every May, from kids panicking that whatever they pick will be boring, generic, or already used by someone else in their grade. I’ve seen kids scroll for hours through lists of “100 Best Yearbook Mottos” online, comparing every line to what their friends have already claimed, and still end up with nothing that feels like them. I told Lila I’d help, but first I asked her to close the Google tab full of pre-written quotes.
I thought about my own senior year, back in 2006. I pulled “Live well, laugh often, love much” off a bumper sticker at the grocery store my mom dragged me to that May. I still have that yearbook on a shelf at home, and when I flip to my page, that line just feels like nothing. It doesn’t remind me of skipping third period twice to get chocolate milkshakes with my boyfriend after I finished my AP exams early. It doesn’t bring back the memory of failing my first AP Bio test and staying after school every Wednesday for extra help, or how my best friend and I ate cheese puffs on the football bleachers every lunch period. It’s just a line someone else made for bumper stickers, not for me.
I asked Lila the three simple questions I always share with kids who get stuck, and they’re the same ones I tell parents to ask their kids at the dinner table if they need help. First: What’s one thing that happened to you this year that you still think about at least once a week? Second: What’s a line someone said to you this year that stuck with you, that you still think about? Third: If you could go back and tell your start-of-year self one thing, what would it be? No overthinking, just the first thing that comes to mind.
Lila didn’t even hesitate on the first question. She told me she didn’t make varsity volleyball after tryouts this fall, and she cried in the locker room because she’d practiced all summer to get a spot. Her JV coach found her, brought her a blue Gatorade, and said “Bench warmers still bring the best donuts.” The team did pre-game donut runs every home game after that, and Lila was in charge of picking the flavors and paying with the team’s Venmo. “It’s actually kind of my favorite thing now,” she said, laughing. I told her that’s her motto. She blinked and said “That’s stupid, it’s not even inspirational.”
That’s the whole point, I told her. Most “inspirational” quotes are generic because they’re made for everyone, not for you. In 10 years, when you flip through this yearbook at a reunion or while cleaning out your parents’ attic, that line will immediately bring you back to this exact year. It’ll remind you how you turned a disappointment into something you actually looked forward to every week. I had a student a few years back, Javi, who moved here mid-year after his family lost their home in a hurricane down south. He was really nervous about speaking up in class, still getting used to being the new kid, and he ended up putting “I still have more to say” as his motto. That meant more to him than any Mark Twain quote he was considering from a list online. Another student, Mia, had knee surgery that kept her out of cross country all year, and she did walking PE for the entire second semester. Her motto was “I walk at my own pace” — short, simple, and exactly what she needed to remember about that hard, slow season.
As a teacher, I’ve noticed a lot of parents accidentally nudge kids toward fancy, generic mottos too. I’ve had parents email me asking if their kid’s idea is “impressive enough” for the yearbook, like a 1-line motto is going to make or break a college application later on. The nice thing about this whole exercise is that it’s low-stakes. It doesn’t need to impress anyone. It just needs to mean something to the kid. Those three questions take five minutes to ask, no big sit-down conversation required, and they almost always pull up something that feels real.
Lila ended up submitting “Bench warmers bring the best donuts” anyway. She texted me this morning that three other girls on the team saw her draft and changed their own mottos to donut-related variations too. I don’t blame kids for feeling pressure to pick something unique; social media has taught them that every little public thing about them has to stand out, has to be perfect. But what most of them don’t realize is that unique doesn’t mean fancy or famous. Unique just means yours. If a kid really wants to use a pre-existing quote, that’s fine too — the only rule I have is that it has to connect to a specific memory from the year, not just sound good.
I’m planning to post those three questions on my classroom bulletin board next April, when yearbook season rolls around again. It’s not a big lesson, just a small nudge to help kids stop looking for the “right” quote online and start looking at the year they actually lived. I still flip through my old yearbook every few years when I’m cleaning out my closet, and I can’t remember a single other person’s motto from my graduating class. But I know that if I’d put something that actually mattered to me that year, I’d still smile when I saw it. For now, that’s the best I can teach: this little line doesn’t have to impress anyone else. It just has to matter to you.
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