Medina High School - Medinian Yearbook (Medina, OH)

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A student’s life consists of many things, most of which revolve around school and school sponsored events. So whether you ' re a member of the football team at the Homecoming pep rally or a group of tired juniors at the mock convention your life at school consists of memories of many different events. School life can be working for your class like senior Pat Boehnen who donates his time and skill to help construct the senior float, or doing classwork like yearbook editors Jim Shields and Jennifer Chidsey who meet with yearbook rep Mr. John Urian and adviser Miss Linda Ocepek to discuss possible cover designs. Community section editors Nancy Smith and Wendy Neal look on. If you ' re involved with the stage, life consists of rehearsing to perfect the wedding scene in the fall play. Or maybe it was perfecting another type of change like Scott Sanford and Bill Graham who portray candidate Walter Mondale and Pope John Paul. Maybe the most important part of life is knowing where you stand, being able to express your feelings. Junior Dave Wagner makes his feelings about the draft known at the mock convention. Lite 3 i

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I It seems the biggest part of a teenager’s life is waiting. Sweet Sixteen. Driver’s License. First Date. Varsity Sports and being Captain of the team. Prom. Commons. Class Rank and Graduation. For the Class of 1984, the waiting is over and The Future Is Now. 4 Life

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Scary Predictions Hit Too Close To Home In 1984 W hen George Orwell wrote his book 1984 in 1948, he foresaw a dark and dismal world that had become a total police state, in which the government was always right. All in all, he made a total of 127 predictions and of these 127, over 100 have come true. For example, he predicted that people would no longer have any private lives, that computers would know everything there was to know about a person. To date, the average person is listed on at least 39 private computers and 40 corporate ones, and the personal computer may soon become standard equipment in every home. Another invention Orwell predicted which would be standard in every home was the video screen. It both spied on people and provided them with information. Fortunately for us television has not yet become a periscope into our homes, but many people would argue that its influence has taken on many aspects of Big Brotherism. With the addition of as many as 178 cable channels throughout the world, television may become even more of an influence in the coming years. Television, along with other mass media such as radio, newspapers, and magazines, has almost completely taken over in the 1980’s. Chemistry teacher T.J. Alexander ob¬ serves, “When Mass Media gets hold of any kind of information, they totally blow it out of proportion. Whatever happened to the silent majority? We need them now, to come out of the woodwork and take control of the nation again. The United States has a great need for a new public hero, someone we haven’t had in a long time. When the new 23C stamp comes out, I wouldn’t be surprised if either Jane Fonda or Dr. Spock are on it!” What would George Orwell say about the world today? He would not be surprised by the world’s great stockpile of nuclear weapons because he predicted that in his novel as well. Our politicians also have helped Orwell’s predictions come true with their own modern version of Doublespeak, where war is peace and love is hate and no one can tell the difference. If all of these changes could happen in the past 35 years, what will the world be like in the next 35 years? Will the world become a totally computerized place, with robots in charge of our lives, or worse yet, will there even be a world in the year 2019? Only time will tell. 6 1984