Worth the Cost

Worth The Cost

By the time I graduate from high school I will be ordained to preach the gospel in my religion. I know right about now you're hearing a heavenly choir and picturing a shaft of heavenly light shining through clouds like some movie. As much as I wish I could say it felt that way the truth is it is a lot of work too. Come with me and I will walk you through the ups and downs, the chills, and spills, and all that is seminary.

To begin with I started seminary the day I started high school. That's the tradition at my church. When I first started over a year ago all that meant to me was instead of getting up at 8:50 am to start school I was stuck getting up at 4:30 to get in the car, drive to church, sit in a room with a handful of other sleep deprived people and listen to a teacher drone on. It sounded like a cruel and unusual punishment. I tried to think of any excuse to get me out of it. Nothing worked. So here I was on my first day trapped in a car on my way to boredom central.

I couldn't have been more wrong! Not only was it not someone boring, there were snacks! The first day was getting to know each other. We talked about what we each liked to do and also what we hoped to gain from seminary. The second answers all sounded alike some version of a better knowledge of the scriptures. I wanted to be different so I said I wanted to find out what was fun about the scriptures. The teacher just smiled. Little did I know I was in for it.

I had originally thought that seminary would be all sitting and listening. Maybe a test or two. as we got into it I found out that when we could just sit and listen it was a rest. We had to do our own talks on subjects we were given to research usually one day before the talk. There was scripture mastery to memorized and get signed off on. We had devotionals which is a talk about what a certain passage or talk someone else did meant to you personally. We had races to see who could answer questions first. This was actually starting to be a little exciting.

I don't mean to make it sound all fun and games. I still was tired every day not counting weekends and the scripture mastery made my head hurt. Also you could not miss a day without doing something to make up. The main make up was watching the talks from general conference and writing our own personal synopsis and thoughts on them. I should know I had to do seven of them. That part was way worst than seminary itself. It took up what should have been my free time for almost an entire week.

As the year went on it got harder to concentrate. We seemed to be going over the same lesson every day. It seemed this way because as winter break got closer the days seemed to blur together. It was turning into one big long day and I couldn't focus. Then, just when I thought I was done, the break was here! Christmas cookies, snow fights, huge dinners, invitations to parties all over the place! The holidays hit full force and all school was blasted out of my mind. That is until I read a story I hadn't read before.