Well next school year I have to attend seminary. There's no way that I can get out of it, and I have to get up at 5 am to get there. How boring is seminary and are there anyways to get out of it?

That sucks! Think of all that sleep you'll lose! You need that your just a kid! During your growing years your brain needs 8-10 hours of sleep.

I did 4 years of early morning seminary during high school ('64-'68). I was a TBM at the time, so it was tolerable.

If you ask tough questions and demand real answers, maybe eventually you will be ejected. Just use the CES Letter for your script.

One of my younger brothers refused to attend seminary, which was unacceptable for our TBM father ... who physically took my brother to seminary and sat next to him for two months before finally giving up.

My brother served a mission anyway and married in the temple. He went exmo about ten years later and his eternal companion divorced him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2015 07:17PM by beyondashadow.

beyondashadow Wrote:
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> One of my younger brothers refused to attend
> seminary, which was unacceptable for our TBM
> father ... who physically took my brother to
> seminary and sat next to him for two months before
> finally giving up.

"By god son, you are going to be brainwashed whether you like it or not"!

It's properly pronounced "Cemetery" since only the dead are found there.

Go to bed about 8pm every night and make sure your parents know how tired you are at the end of the day from getting up so early. Sleep during seminary. Find a non-LDS doctor and ask him to give you a recommendation that you not be forced to get up at 5 a.m. It is proven science that kids your age need to sleep as late as possible before going to school. Make it abundantly clear to your parents that 5 a.m. does NOT work for you. You could ask for a home study version of seminary. I did home study seminary and it was like going to kindergarten...Easy, peasy. You just fill-in a lot of blanks with the correct brainwashing propaganda and mail it in or hand it to your teacher. Good luck! It sure is a huge waste of everyone's time.

"Find a non-LDS doctor and ask him to give you a recommendation that you not be forced to get up at 5 a.m. It is proven science that kids your age need to sleep as late as possible before going to school."

Ya know, I wonder if this can be identified as some sort of child abuse. Just getting up and going to school is tough for most teens. My branch began early morning seminary when I was 15 or 16, but I never went once. The chapel was about a 15-minute drive from our house, and then we would have had to double back to get to high school. Plus, we were poor, and we couldn't afford cars and gas to go to things like that. I don't think the LDS church has any idea of how much early morning seminary negatively affects people.

A related note: when I was a recently returned missionary, one of the bishop's counselors suggested me to teach early morning seminary. At that time, I was an apprentice plumber. I was working on a prison construction job about 40 minutes from my house. I had to get up at 6 AM to get to work by 7. But this doofus bishop's counselor ignorantly asked me to be the seminary teacher without asking me one thing about my job or my schedule. He was a white-collar sales executive, and he just assumed that I could adjust my work schedule like he could adjust his.

Now that it's totally correlated, it's probably a total drag.

Not to mention that you're not really going to learn anything startling or necessary.

Nope, the whole point is to 'break you to the saddle.'

And now they have tests! I got my seminary certificate of graduation just for showing up.

It's likely that your instructor will feel entitled to your undivided attention, since he or she is also losing sleep, and isn't really getting anything out of it.

In my 1958 - 1962 cohort we were all goody two shoes. Even when we ditched school, we'd go to seminary first...

It's not likely that you're ever going to be offered the opportunity to chose whether to attend or not. The parentals probably think they know best, and by their lights, they are correct.

I guess you'll have to suck it up and just try to enjoy the social aspects of the occasion. You are, after all, a social animal.

If your parents are "making" you go (they're really not, you know -- they're simply making the alternatives to going far less appealing than giving in and going), here's what I suggest:

Every morning, bring a pillow with you. Arrive, plop down in your seat, put the pillow in a comfy place, and go to sleep.
If the instructor or anyone gives you a hard time, explain that you don't believe this nonsense, but your parents are forcing you to attend -- what they can't do is force you to believe, and go back to sleep.

Maybe -- just maybe -- the adults involved will get the message, and stop their silly tactics. Maybe.

Slept through most of seminary.
Another got quite sick from losing sleep.
Another says now that looking back on that time she was always in a dream world, so tired and half sick.

That's one reason I taught seminary when they asked me. I could do it in my own home (the kids could sleep later) and I could make the lessons shorter. We did away with all that "start with a song from the hymnbook" junk. I did the whole thing in a half hour.

I taught from the book, but never taught anything I didn't believe. I would say..."Well, the church says this...but not everyone believes that." Or "there are a lot of ways to look at this."

I would leave some things out.
I never bore my testimony---which was always suggested at the end of each lesson.

In the end, I had to quit. After all, the seminary teacher was supposed to be one of the stalwarts in the ward. And even filling the position became a deception I couldn't continue.

I probably knew the scriptures and etc. better than most anyone in the ward/stake, but my testimony wasn't all that impressive.

Besides, my temple recommend was expiring and I didn't plan on renewing it.

What do ministers, priests, rabbis, and children have in common? They all might attend a school that has the word 'seminary' in it.

Seminary comes from the Latin word seminarium, meaning "plant nursery," which can be interpreted as, "breeding ground." Like a greenhouse that provides ideal conditions for seeds to grow into hearty plants, a seminary was first a place for young men to become priests. Seminary typically describes religious institutions but it can apply to nonreligious schools as well.

I grew up in Seminary (a little town in the Bible Belt called 'Zion Seminary'). It had nothing to do with lds (they only hijacked it from the Theological Seminary), and vice versa. It was only happenstance that we were Mormon. There were only a few of us that went to "seminary" in Seminary, while learning NOTHING, in regards to historical accuracy, religion or even useful information.

You learned at a young age not mention to people that you went to seminary. That would make them think you are getting an education.

Instead, in Mormonism, the class is really just book of - Joseph Smith - Mormon thumping.

I attended seminary for 2 weeks in grade 12....and then told the instructor he was full of BS for teaching about Kolob. Wish you could do likewise. No advice here but I offer my sympathy for your having to endure it.

Ron Burr

I had early morning band in high school. It was at 6:30 am. I woke up at 6. That was bad for me. I would always fall asleep in my class after lunch. I could not stay awake during it. Waking up at 5 sounds even worse. The difference was I actually enjoyed band and that would wake me up.

You've got the same name as the young man in my ward that is currently frustrating his parents! Of course his mom has asked if it was because he pursued band instead of insisting he go to Seminary. But, back in the beginning, when he was old enough to go to Seminary, there were some issues, so she chose to keep him in band.

Interesting that of my kids, only my girls went to seminary, and so far, only one boy went for a couple of months, and then started pointing out the contradictions. Really interesting to me, is that it was seminary that caused him to decide he's an atheist!

If dozing off and things like that don't work, try and make it useful time in other ways.

* Bring a novel, especially one you need to read for your literature class.
* read the news (Drudge Report links you to everything) and exmormon.org on your phone or tablet. Have LDS stuff tabbed which you can bring up quickly. "(I was just reading 3rd Moroni..."
* prepare 3x5 study cards for your legitimate school work: foreign language vocabulary, chemistry notes (e.g. Periodic Table), History notes & dates, etc. Use the time to review your real academics, memorize things, stuff like that.

It sucks, but you might be able to put this difficult time to some good use.

Don't forget to flunk all your Seminary exams!

Could you work on puzzles or other homework in the back of the class.

I didn't do seminary, so I don't speak from experience. I just want to wish you well.

I do know I spent many Mormon hours day dreaming and working out a happier future at your age and younger. No one can take away your inner thoughts and imagination.

korihorwasright Wrote:
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> There's no way that I can get out of it, and I
> have to get up at 5 am to get there. How boring
> is seminary and are there anyways to get out of
> it?

There are always ways to get out of it.

It just depends what you are willing to sacrifice to do it.

Typically your parents will respond in the way you already expect, but perhaps with greater effort than you've seen before.

My Ex-wife takes stuff away from my kids when they act up against the church. So she takes away their computer access, their smart phones, stops them meeting friends, etc. They are too concerned with losing those things, so they toe the line.

The reality is kids have huge power in the parent-child relationship. They just don't realise it, and if they do, they don't know how to wield that power.

They have to be willing to be punished, and to not go crazy about it. If they can happily take any punishment, and stick to their guns, then the parents will typically start to crack.

Yes, do what my daughter did. Confront the teacher on Polygamy and the Book of Abraham. They will not know what the hell to say and ask you leave for being disruptive.

One good thing I did for my kids (not that they remember the good things), was I didn't force them to go to Seminary. I detested it in my HS years. I hated that it cut into my sleep time and my study time and night. And we didn't have a choice of teachers. Some of them were ok and some of them were pure morning torture. So I told my kids it was purely their choice.

We lived in Provo when my youngest was in high school. He signed up for Seminary his first semester out of pressure from the Bishop. I told him it was up to him, but that I didn't care if he flunked Seminary. It didn't figure into his GPA and he didn't need to do homework for it. He should look at it as an hour to just relax.

Well, that didn't go over well with the teacher when he wasn't reading the BOM. So that was the only semester he wasted his time. It gave him an extra class to get his credits faster, or a couple of semesters it gave him a study hall hour to do homework. It really is a waste of an hour a day that you'll never get back.

Where I live, most of the high schools offer seminary during the school day, too. You could walk off school grounds for that class period, no matter what your age (you had to be a junior or senior to leave school otherwise) and nobody would think twice. Most kids would take it as an elective and skip, especially if it was at the beginning or end of the school day.

Maybe see if you can find some alternative like that, and then just never show up? I was too much of a goody two-shoes to skip any kind of "class" back then, even though I thought the whole thing was bullshit...

Do your parents expects you to attend BYU?

It isn't about knowing the ever-changing material/doctrine; it is about complying. Do all their friend's kids attend seminary?

Show them legitimate studies regarding teens and sleep. That doesn't include showering/getting ready for school time... Add that time to the total.

Do home study if you must. It is remedial/primary age kids can do it, or fake it.

If you must go, ask logical questions and it will force your teacher out of the church also. Good luck.

Stop at Starbucks on the way and take a cup of coffee to class. Sit in the back and use that hour to prepare for your real classes.

My father was a CES administrator, overseeing seminary programs, so we were all locked into going whether we liked it or not. We carpooled with a friend of mine who wasn't so enthusiastic, and he came up with lots of creative excuses to get out of going. Lost shoes, homework put off so it had to be finished in the morning, broken computer, alarm didn't go off. I think if you end up having to go, it would be a lot easier nowadays to use the time for something worthwhile with smartphones and tablets so prevalent, whether that's schoolwork or just reading the news.

vman455 Wrote:
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it would be a lot easier nowadays
> to use the time for something worthwhile with
> smartphones and tablets so prevalent, whether
> that's schoolwork or just reading the news.

Or perhaps having a contest with an equally bored friend using the internet to identify how many misrepresentations the instructor makes during the lesson.

korihorwasright Wrote:
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> Well next school year I have to attend seminary.
> There's no way that I can get out of it, and I
> have to get up at 5 am to get there. How boring
> is seminary and are there anyways to get out of
> it?

Short of getting out of it, as birchtree mentioned, bring a Hot Drink (and a printout from the church's website that caffeine is [now] ok; it has always been ok; there must have been misunderstanding that it was against the wow - weird of wickedness; everybody drinks caffeine now; it's just hot chocolate-flavored cafe).

Be Prepared. The teacher will be impressed on day 1. Know facts! It makes it more fun-lively. When the teacher is in over his or her head there is (probably) only one student in the class that can straighten him out: may as well be you.

You have an opportunity to kNOw MORE than anyone in the class: especially the teacher. Many here didn't have the scary parts (truths) of Mormonism so readily available [What do you know? What do you want to know?].

How boring is seminary? You'll be able to answer that for us pretty soon. Meanwhile, teach the class, or fall asleep and be counted.

You state that there is no way you can get out of it. Then you proceed to ask the question: "are there anyways to get out of it?".

Perhaps you've answered your own question. Rise - or Fall - to the equation-occasion. Remember, COFFEE/ caffeine is NOT against the Words of Wimps.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2015 10:07AM by moremany.

I was also forced to get up at 5am to be at seminary on time. I refused to participate and made my teachers so miserable that each quit after a year of having me in class. (Three teachers in three years.) I was given the option to "test out" instead of attending seminary my senior year. (They didn't want me negatively affecting the other students.) I passed, but only because my freedom was at stake.

Ironically, I was also the YW's Beehive, Mia Maids and Laurel class president every year. It really irked them that I refused to conform.

Well, if you can't get out of it, at least you should always ask hard problems. Make people think. Ask questions from facts you learn here. You can always excuse yourself by insisting that you want to be a good missionary and need to know how to answer the questions that seemingly have no answer.

I attended high school in the late fifties in Salt Lake City. We were given a "free period" and many of us chose seminary mainly for the socialization. The TSCC owned building was right across the street from the high school. It couldn't have been easier.

If I would have had to get up early for an hour of religious talk as some posters have stated, I wouldn't have gone.

The one good thing that came of it was that the bible class was always started (after prayer) with the class in unison reciting the names of the books of the old and new testament in order. Even today, people are impressed I know the bible so well and can quickly locate any verse. "And for my next trick....."

So, for me, seminary wasn't all bad.

Maybe take Jack Handey's advice and whenever the teacher pauses "just let out a big snort and say "How do you figger that!" real loud. Then lean back and sort of smirk."

In all honestly, the best way if you REALLY don't want to go, and your parents kicking you out of the house is not an option (it was in my house if we didn't go to seminary) is to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions.

I would ask what exactly you are going to learn in Seminary that you don't already know, or could not learn at church or home.

If that doesn't work, make it uncomfortable for the teacher with uncomfortable questions as suggested above. Hell...It's not comfortable for you, and if you are going to go it better be worth your while, and they should have some intelligent responses to your questions.