CLASS OF 2000 UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

Everyone's watching the class of 2000, and frankly, 15-year-old Sarah Rutherford is getting tired of the spotlight.

"We get so much more attention than other classes," she said. "I'm starting to feel sorry for the kids in the classes behind us."

But Sarah, as well as her friends Katie McLain and Lilian Dean, know there's a very good reason society is keeping an eye on them. The three girls, who all go to Cape Central High School, will be in the first class to graduate from high school in the new millennium.

The girls and their classmates, who are growing up in the age of Nintendo and the Internet, will be the first to step out into a "real world" that may look very different from the one they're living in.

Though today the girls are caught up in holiday activities like everyone else, the three teens are already thinking about what the future will be like.

McLain, a sophomore, said she thinks that when she graduates from high school, almost every occupation will involve the use of a computer.

She uses a computer almost every day in her classes and at home and thinks the class of 2000 is more computer-oriented than the classes before it.

Students get so much information from computers. She said, "Through computers and the Internet, we know so much more about issues than people in the past."

She thinks the efficiency of computers and Internet communication will eventually help educate people and solve social problems like drug addiction.

Rutherford, who agrees her class is computer-oriented, isn't so sure about diving headfirst into today's technology.

She said that, although she's around computers a lot, she doesn't really know much about them. She admits she'll probably have to "suck it up and learn someday soon," but she's not too excited about being computer-savvy.

"You wonder, 'Well, do I really need to learn about all of these devices?" she said. "If the Internet's this big, it makes me wonder what's going to be next."

Dean uses a computer almost daily, and it makes her life easier, but like Rutherford, she hopes we don't let technology go too far.

"When I graduate, I think everything will be more computer-oriented, but we can't let them take over our lives," she said. "We have to remember who we are and we have to remember that there are still certain things we should do ourselves."

Dean said she uses computers in classes and to type papers almost every day but is appalled at some of the things people can do on the Internet now -- like shop.

Even if her parents would let her, Dean could never imagine missing the malls for a computer terminal.

Rutherford said the Internet, as well as other time-saving devices, really gives students her age a whole new understanding about the world. Her hope, though, is that she can make it through high school thinking clearly about what's important.

"It's weird enough to be graduating," she said. "On top of graduation and all the new things it brings, we're wearing this label of 'Class of 2000,' which seems big and confusing in itself."