Not I. Only had an opportunity to attend in grade 12. After 2 weeks I challenged the oh so righteous TBM teacher on Kolob, told him it was bullshit and walked out. That extra hour of sleep was much appreciated.
RB
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2016 09:20AM by Lethbridge Reprobate.
I didn't have a choice. Wonderful parents required that I attend. So I did. And I graduated. I guess it was good for me because I learned to question "why was I there?" I wasn't there to learn.....I did socialize.
It was like the religion classes at BYUs....required.
As a child/youth/teenager I didn't learn to make choices.
My seminary was during high school, or not at all.
My junior year we met in an annex adjacent to the high school. Freshman, sophomore years I don't believe I went at all. My home economics teacher freshman year was the bishop's wife, who also filled in as a seminary teacher. We met at odd times, but never early morning.
Was in a different high school each year of high school. The first three were predominantly LDS schools.
By my senior year, finished high school in coastal, sunny California. Wasn't active at all by then. My high school wasn't Mormon. Only one other student to my knowledge was LDS out of my graduating class. We double dated. My best friend dated him. And his best friend dated me. :)
He wasn't remotely active either, but his dad was a high stake councilman.
Hated every minute, but I had zero options, Mormonism was MANDATORY. Every meeting, every fireside, every missionary open house, every scripture chase, every Tuesday scouts, every necro dunking, every stake conference, every EFY, every fucking thing.
Early morning seminary is a very bad idea, young people need sleep more than they need Mormonism.
I liked that I felt like I belonged. There weren't alot of mormons in my highschool and my friends didn't understand all the crazy rules my parents gave me, but my mormon friends did, even the rebellious one. They understood that Saturday night sleepovers were never going to happen or that if I sneak into an R rated movie or even some PG-13 it's best not to mention it. They got that I had to wear a shawl to a formal dance, but could take it off to dance but had to put it back on for photos. So while I didn't like getting up early, I did enjoy that I was surrounded by people that were like me for a small part of the day.
Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > May I ask if anyone was in such a TBM-ish > household where you had to wake up early, "study > the scriptures", and *then* go to seminary. > > The church wants you from the moment you wake > up...
TSCC wants you BEFORE you wake up, and while you're asleep... during seminary, for instance.
I hated getting up. It's interesting to me now that my father, who was basically a jack mormon, did faithfully drive me to seminary for 3 out of 4 years of High School. It couldn't have been much easier for him than it was for me.
I had a wonderful woman for a seminary teacher. Cancer took her about 20 years ago. I was glad that she was dead before I left the church. She was one of the very few people who I would have cared about disappointing when I left the church.
I can pin point the exact day, first Sunday of Sept 1974, when captain asshole, my MORmON male parent and the resident MORmON enforcement agent informed me that he had signed me up for early MORmON seminary which I would be attending the following day. I was COMPLETELY blindsided by that move which was done WITH OUT any conferring with me!!!! I can also tell you that I was one pissed off hombre. EM seminary started at 7:00 AM. I had to do Mourning chores before getting ready to go to school. That effectively jacked my wake up time back to 4:30 AM. With my schedule which also included evening chores I never made it to bed before 11 PM, Midnight was more like it most of the time. SO I was having my ass worked off doing farm labor and expected to get by with about 5 hours of sleep a night. The next year, my sophomore year, I finally had a drivers license and managed to buy my own car so I had more personal freedom ...... to completely run myself into the ground. I tried to play football that year, in addition to meeting all of my MORmON parent's other requirements. That lasted about 3 weeks until I collapsed face first into my athletic locker due to exhaustian. Never a single mention of this kid has way too much on his plate. I tried to keep up, but had to quit football about two weeks later .......... but thank god I was still going to FUCKING early Mourning seminary !!!! The next year, we had some total bitch seminary teacher. She got upset at me over some completely trivial thing, and started shrieking: "why do not you leave and never come back!!!!"
I sat there for a couple of minutes with her scathing words ringing in my ears, just thinking about what she had said and how I felt about her CRAPPY lessons and the entire CRAPPY seminary program, and my entire DISMAL experience with EM seminary. There was NOT a single time that I had shown up for that POS seminary class when I could say that it was worth the trouble, or that I felt like it had somehow actually improved my life. It was just crap and more crap and only crap. In a moment of stunning clarity, I felt my legs push my body up out of my chair. I put my stupid POS seminary instruction binder in the classroom storage closet. That got the attention of the entire class. I headed toward the door. In a terse tone the teacher said: "where do you think you are going?? " I stopped for second, turned my head toward her and said: "I am leaving, and I am NEVER coming back " then I walked out the door. Thankfully she did not try to stop me, and it was a concern because that same teacher had taken it upon herself to get into a huge brawl with a very gangster like girl who was attempting to leave school as she refused to stay for detention. (WHy would any sane person do that instead of just turning the issue over to school admin?? Why? because that bitch had some serious control issues!! But yours truly walked out on her seminary class and she knew better than to try to physically stop me that morning.)
Just as I said/ just as she had said, I never went back to her POS class. .........IF ONLY I had just kept on going and done the same thing with the POS MORmON religion at the time!!!!! Oh yah and I guess my mention of that incident is the best / most enjoyable moment that I ever had in EM seminary BY FAR !!!!
The teacher is what makes or breaks it. I was lucky. Back in the day school usually started at 9:00, not 7:30 like it does now. So Seminary was at 7:00, which seemed early then. Now kids would love it. My co-worker teaches Seminary and they start at 5:45 a.m.
I had one year with the most horrendous asshole in all of mormondumb as the teacher. It was a year of constant fighting with the parents over having to go. Even my dad, who hardly ever stood up for me in anything, told the bishop that they needed to move me up to the older class because of the teacher.
Then in that class, I had a year of the best teacher you could want if you have to be a mormon and attend church every morning.
I did not force my kids to go. Their school grades were what was important. In fact I would only allow them to go if it wasn't affecting their school performance. So I had one daughter who was carbon copy of little NormaRae--give up sleep to get basically straight A's, until she decided she didn't want to go to BYU then it was "Hallelujah, sleep in!" Other daughter went one day and was like "forget this shit."
I mainly remember that I had to get up at 5:30 to get ready for Seminary - and I hated getting up so early.
But anyway, it was just something else I had to do and I always did what I was told. That was that.
The class was okay. One of the really nice men in the ward taught it and he did a nice job. The only thing I remember specifically, though, is scripture chases. We were all pretty competitive, and it sort of woke things up.
I feel pretty confident that had I been given the choice of whether or not to attend, and would have chosen NOT to go.
When I was a fifteen-year-old hippie boy who refused to go to that church, my father offered me a ride to town every morning in exchange for me attending seminary. He knew I was getting bullied on the school bus, so I was motivated. In seminary we studied the New Testament and practiced scripture searches, which meant finding a scripture quickly when given clues. To stave off boredom, I really studied and used a red pencil to highlight. I even studied some at home, memorizing the location of commonly used verses. I beat everyone in the class handily. My search times were the shortest, and my Mormon classmates hated me for it.
One girl stood up in front of me and God and everyone and said that long hair on boys was a sin. One of the boys assaulted me in the hall and brandished a hunting knife, saying, "I'll cut your fucking hippie hair." I managed to push him off and run. That's how seminary went for me. Very enlightening, I must say.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2016 10:19PM by donbagley.
scripture chase was just one more lame and boring aspect of having to cope with seminary. I got ragged on for not being more enthusiastic about rooting through the pages of scripture like a maniac like the other kids to find some scripture on cue from the teachers. I decided to remedy the problem my way. I took a left over bible from the closet. then I carefully glued and taped the pages together so that if the thing was open it was open to a marked scripture. suddenly I was the top scripture chaser. When they finally figured out what I had done they were totally peeved, as if I had committed some kind of sin.
I was so worried of disappointing my family that I went every morning. Several years in I started questioning. I wanted to have a testimony but had so many questions. I genuinely believed seminary was like school. I thought I was there to learn and gain knowledge, so I sincerely asked all the questions I had. I studied the lessons, read the appropriate scriptures before each lessons. My teacher became worried because my questions were difficult to answer and brought out doubts and inconsistencies. She started writing little faith inspiring notes to me and hiding them in my scriptures. One morning one of the "priesthood" holder students stood up and told me that we were here to listen not ask questions and suggested I stop and just accept. So I excused myself and brought the manual and scriptures to the foyer (our church was within walking distance of the high school. I spent the rest of the year studying alone in the foyer trying desperately to gain my testimony. When the teacher tried to talk to me or sent a classmate to try to get me to come back in the room, I went into the chapel and got on my knees and prayed until they went away. Each day I answered all the questions the manual asked, I took notes on what I thought of the lesson and wordlessly gave then to the teacher. I guess I did enough to pass, but I wouldn't go back into the classroom. I learned a lot from seminary. I learned church lessons weren't about learning or gaining knowledge. I learned I would never gain a testimony of the Mormon church because it wasn't true, no matter how badly I wanted one. I learned priesthood holders could act without consequences against no priesthood holders. I learned I didn't want to follow blindly and that I could stand up to peer pressure if I really wanted to.
Enjoyed? When your mom is the teacher (small branch), whether going to the crutch or staying home, waking up to read bad, hateful, poorly written fiction (vs. giving thanks for the day, stretching, learning anything! [else]) is the same.
Take beauty rest from poor souls to give it to the cult is never any good.
I lived "out in the field" when I went to early morning seminary. Our ward was scattered across three counties and there were only two other Mormons in my high school. Since I was too young to drive, the only time I got to see my other church friends -- including the girl I had a crush on -- was during church things. So I liked that about early morning seminary, but nothing else.
I absolutely loathed it. Fortunately I was overseas and it really wasn't that serious, so I slept through most of it and lied about doing my reading assignments, partly since I had already read through the whole Bible and BoM a few years prior. The class only had like 10 people in it including me. Honestly now I don't remember a bit of it, except the end every day when we'd all file outside and wait for the school bus.
NOT ME! I grew up in a very small town where if you were caught leaving it turned into a big fucking deal of a rumor that "you weren't cool because you weren't choosing the right." I had a great reason to leave because my teacher was VERY anti-gay and he made it VERY known nearly every single day. He was an old offensive douche bag that offended people on purpose to make people feel bad and guilty about themselves.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2016 10:53AM by sunbitch.
I did. It was awesome arising at 5am, scrambling to the church by 5:45. The fellowship w/ my boyz (friends), we made breakfast afterwards, the laughter, the joy, and just the general uplift that I received from it bolstered me throughout the day. I definitely got more out of it, than I put in. Just kidding...hated every fucking minute of it. Was forced to attend by my idiot parents. Sleep depriving, grade reducing, and just plain cult indoctrination at it's finest.
Didn't like the sleep deprivation. Went all four years. Can't say I learned that much as I was only half awake. It prepared you for the sleep depriving mission too.
Whats to enjoy???? MY seminary teacher was a nice guy but out of all those years of attending seminary, the only thing I remember is that Whole wheat bread is much better for you than white.
Sixteen year-old Ziller had concluded that the Book of Mormon, Joseph’s Myth and Mormonism was probably the biggest load of crapola ever.
With this new world-view, he no longer felt it necessary to attend early morning seminary before school.
After two glorious days in a row of sleeping in, Ziller’s parental units made it clear that they felt differently.
Unless Ziller drove himself and his little brother to seminary each morning, his automobile privileges would be revoked and he would have to take the bus to school.
The early morning hours of the next day found Ziller guiding the 1979 Chevy Monte Carlo through the dark suburban streets toward the home of the “cemetery” teacher.
Ziller glanced at the clock on the dash and thought of his non-Mormon girlfriend.
She would be getting up soon to get ready for school.
Her parents would already have left to commute to their jobs in the big city.
Soon she would be stretching and arching her tan taut body across the sheets of her double bed while the alarm teased her awake.
Her long blonde hair would be tossed into a picture perfect mess of bed-head.
Ziller parked under a street lamp outside the seminary teacher’s house.
The baby blue Monte Carlo’s chrome spoke wheels reflected in the home’s large plate glass living room window.
“Little Brother? Ziller has some stuff to do before school instead of going to seminary. You can find a ride to school from here, right?”
“Well, if it is all the same to you, Big Brother, would you mind dropping me off at my friend So-and-so’s house?”
Ziller put the car in gear and pulled back into the street.
He and Little Brother never attended another day of seminary and everyone was happy.
It was mostly the hour, though what I heard when I did show up was mostly nonsense. We started at 6:00 a.m. Taking release time would have cut into electives and AP classes. I just went a few times each year. My mother believed that adolescents needed sleep to grow properly, so I wasn't forced to attend.
The only time any part of it was the least bit "enjoyable" was when I had a mormon girlfriend who was in my seminary class, and we could spend most of the hour in the back of the class playing touchy-feely under the desks.
I realized what a profound waste of my time it was when I got on my mission a few years later and realized I couldn't remember one single thing, one single scripture, one single uplifting story from Seminary to help me on my mission - much less help me in life. I was soooo happy for my kids that we figured out the Mormon thing while they were only 12 and 10 so neither had to endure early morning seminary. Early morning band rehearsals a couple of times a semester is bad enough ...
When it was first brought in in our area in the UK, early 80's, (prior to that we did the Home Study seminary), even though I was TBM I thought it was crazy and impractical. Wards covered large areas geographically, and the students had to be got to either the chapel or the seminary teacher's home for 6.am, in order for them to have their lesson then get back home again in time for going to school. In order to get them there it means assigning an adult driver (or drivers depending on no's), usually on a rota basis, to drive round and pick everybody up and then take them home again afterwards, at their own expense of course. So you have both adults and teenagers being dragged out of bed at an unearthly hour to be ferried around for miles to go somewhere nobody really wants to be. Stupid!
My seminary experience was mid-seventies, Old testament, 1 year, small branch. I loved it. I got to hang out with my 3 best friends, it wasn't that early (7 am), and the teacher was fun and cared about the kids more than the church or church doctrine. We were being taught how to live and handle life's problems, using the OT as a tool.
Contrast this with required religion classes at BYU taught by sanctimonious jerks posturing for a better church appointment who wanted you to just take their word for everything. Blind obedience, rules, and rote answers. I hated that.
You know it sucked BIG TIME when the most anticipated thrill all week was watching a Tom Trails filmstrip on Friday. My whole seminary class erupted in LOUD LAUGHTER when Tom's girlfriend (Lily) died in a car wreck though. Not quite the reaction the seminary teacher was going for.
I usually caught up on my sleep during classes in high school. My grades were horseshit. One teacher thought I was passing out due to drugs. When he asked what I was on I told him "LDS". LOL!!!
Great one about not reaching the anticipated reaction.
Not a seminary experience, but I royally pissed off the YM teacher when he asked the class about wanting to be on the winning team. I explained that a person might get more playing time on the losing team. He told me I was wrong, but today I am right.
[Trying to grow up, being forced to attend] (LDS) [faux] Seminary (taken from real [theological] seminary, without the education - but instead, indoctrination, inJSBS) in ["Zion Seminary" (an actual place)], never amounted to much.
It was hard to explain to others in town that 'SEMINARY', in Seminary, wasn't really what it sounded like. I was so glad to finally leave seminary. It wasn't until over 20 years later that I learned what real seminary was. Had I not grown up moron I may have attended (real) [theological] seminary.
I did for one year because I sat next to a girl who was really hot who I ended up dating. She was super tbm... Otherwise, it would have been a very tired and boring year.
I attended early morning seminary for 3 years. I regret it now. I had insomnia throughout high school I would fall asleep when it was time to get up in the morning. I was so exhausted after school every day I would collapse on my bed and take a nap without even taking my coat off. Stupid cult. When I was ridding my house of all traces of Mormonism, I threw the seminary diploma away.
I was a big Kool-Aid drinker of the church. I went to early morning seminary only because the male teachers were cute. I stared at them and did not learn a thing. Laughing Out Loud, Zoe (confessing why I really went)
I really enjoyed seminary... the morning i walked in 20 minutes late with a big cup of steaming french vanilla gas station cappuccino that you could smell clear up the hall. The teacher was in the middle of lecturing about the wow. The looks I got were so worth it!
I trashed the trashy scriptures I used to (be forced to) chase. Now they chase me... but they'll never catch me.
I left TMC at an early age (not early enough!) - unfortunately not until after seminary. Years later I wasted time and money on another useless, overpriced [bibles are free, even ones 'translated correctly'] ($60+) set of (impersonalized) scriptures (3+1) (don't ask why). Adding insult to injury, coincidentally enough, a few days later my folks gave me a new ($90+) quad (unfortunately, with my name on it). Why didn't they ask if I already had a set?
All's well... until a few years later, around the same time I escaped-resigned, (believe it or not - I couldn't!), I was gifted yet another useless cult prop, yes, another monogrammed quad!