When i was in high school, i was heavily involved in extracurricular activities. Some of these, particularly drama, required me to stay after school until rather late in the evening. Since for me to attend seminary i would have had to get up at or before 4:00 in the morning, the only year of high school i attended seminary was the one year my ward offered it Wednesday evenings (and even then i missed several classes).
I’ve mentioned this to some members of the church over the years, and have actually been told by a few of them* how horrible it was that my family didn’t make the “sacrifice” to get me to seminary. For some reason i still think it was important that i got 7–8 hours of sleep a night, and i also think it was important for me to be involved in the activities i was involved in. (Sometimes the choice is between good and good, after all.)
* Usually folks without high schoolers of their own who would have had to get up at 4:00 am, of course.
Faith Hill: Where Are You, Christmas?
11 years ago
1 comment:
That's not the only reason none of us attended seminary! There was also the whole Mommie would have to get up ridiculously early (and when you would have attended that would have meant Michelle and I would have to get up ridiculously early, too), drive us to church, sit in the parking lot for an hour, and then go back home. That just wasn't going to happen. It's still 20ish minutes depending on lights to get to the chapel. Back then, before they put in a shortcut road, it was 30ish minutes. Add in cost of gas and the costs monetarily and time and stress to attend seminary were simply not worth it.
I don't think Michelle did any seminary. I did three years, all home study. Two of those years (I think OT and NT) I didn't actually read the scriptures, but instead just filled in the blanks and turned it in and got full credit. The other year Mommie found out I hadn't actually been doing what I was supposed to and so she did it with me (after breakfast, at a reasonable time of day) as part of my homeschooling. That was Book of Mormon. I never did D&C/Church History because I was in college full time the year I would have been a senior and between that and working part time and having a boyfriend by November of that year who later became my husband, there wasn't time for seminary.
Another homeschooling family did attend early morning seminary during their 14-18 ages, but I didn't. The bishop at the time didn't want to allow me to do it at home (you know... the whole stupid "morning sacrifice is good" idiotic argument... and he even had a son my age going to EMS), but Mommie and Daddy flat out told him that my siblings did not go and without home study *I* would not go either. So he approved home study seminary.
Ani's situation will be interesting. I also adamantly refuse to take a kid to early morning seminary. I'm a morning person, but don't feel it's a good thing to be at church at 5:30 in the morning. Ani is a diagnosed insomniac and to have to get up between 4 and 4:30 would mean she would get 3-5 hours of sleep a night and that's definitely not okay (bedtime makes no difference on when she actually starts sleeping and, trust me, we've tried everything we could think of and then some things the doctor thought of). Add to that that we homeschool and so we do not have school-imposed time restraints (i.e. high school starting at 7:30 and the need of transportation time before that). And then to matters even more complicated, she'll be completing 8th grade in the 2011-12 school year making her 12 years old when she starts 9th grade. We'll see what they decide about whether she can do seminary at all.
To be honest, I'm not fussed about it either way. We already get told often how much more the older two know about scriptures than other kids their age so clearly we're already doing something right. I just don't think that'll change magically just because we refuse to send them to early morning seminary.
Post a Comment