Medicine Hat High School - Yearbook (Medicine Hat Canada, Alberta)

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VALEDICTORY ADDRESS CHOICES Honored Guests and Fellow Graduands. You are all special because you have made choices to get to this milestone. For the participants, this graduation is the end of senior high school. Choices crammed the last three years. Not all demanded life- and-death decisions or even great depths of thought, but all are models of choices for which we will be responsible in the future. Consider the choices we made preparing for senior high school. We needed to have our future career chosen so we could select our elective classes. For many of us, if we did not have our future planned, we copied the goals of a popular classmate. In this way, one lesson was learned: we should start planning our future, but one bad habit also arose: we would start looking at a popular classmember as the model for our choices. In the first English and Social Studies classes, teachers tried to prepare us for choices we would need to make in career and college. The teacher emphasized, People who do not learn to study now will not be successful in university! or You have to spend time on homework because when you get to college, people will not be making these decisions for you! But we asked: Why do we need to do this?', and I am going into conservation and forestry, why do I need Shakespeare?,' So our teachers told us individually, You are establishing pat- terns now that you will use in the future. And our teachers told the class, Get to work! becuase they knew if no one made the choice to study, everyone would feel the pressure to follow that tradition. Normally, our friends were involved when we made choices. They could be vocal in their support of a position, they could jokingly prod us to see their views, or they could just glance! flash their disapproval. If we were lucky, they could even be helpful!!! For example, on a good vs good choice, my friends could be Pepsi drinkers. Then, I could drink Pepsi to fit in or I could drink Coke just for the sake of friendly arguments. This type of choice is the easiest to make because, either way no one loses, and everyone has something refreshing to sip. Other choices are more troublesome. There are decisions where time is limited and you have to make a choice without consulting your friends or considering small but important facts. With some decisions, it is too easy to agree with a wrong turn by saying nothing. In the future, crowds of people will ignore paths of thought which only courageous individuals will investigate. These searchers will discover the thin line that separates, say, a small gambling pastime from a compulsive million dollar habit.

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GRAD PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE There are so many things I want to say, but there is no possible way to say everything. Well, to try, anyway. First of all, thanks to my family and close friends, I love you all, and I wouldn't have made it through 12 years of school Without you. I'm really going to miss Hat High and all the crazies in it! We've had some hardships and heartaches, but we always seemed to pull through, Standing By Each Other. We certainly can't forget the good times, what a blast! We sure stood by each other then, too! I would like to wish the best of luck to everyone in future endeavours. Finally, I would like to thank some important people who helped make our graduation a success. A big thanks to the 1987 grad executive: Collsy, Theresa, Lisa Denman, Hirschy, Mon, Leanne, and their committees, Mr. Mac Chead honchol and all the other advisors. Thanks, also, to all the people who supported our grad, and to the parents of grads, who put up with some late nights, parties and expenses. Special gratitude is extended to the Parents Safe Grad Committee. Everyone did a tremen- dous job! If I have left anyone out, please accept my apologies. Thanks again, and love, Bootie Karen Bootland

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Graduands: we are entering the real world where we must make decisions about everything that affects our lives. We are obligated to decide how to react. We can either ignore or learn from past actions. We can store up anger or forgive others' mistakes. We can be satisfied with mediocrity or ask for perfection from ourselves and others. We should not be afraid when our friends give us responsibility by allowing us to face the consequences for personal decisions. If we retain that responsibility our friends give us, we will be rejecting many wrong choices. In return, we can do our friends a favor. At times our friends will be unmotivated, depressed, and lonely. We must help them choose to search for faith, hope, joy, love, and peace. These five belong to our friends just as decision-making responsibility belongs to us. Ev Avant Ever onward. As we enter a choice-filled world, we should remember what our friends need, and what they give us in return. Together, let us choose to face the world. Kevin Paul Kornelson Kevin Paul Kornelson