School

 For about 90- 95% of the population in my school of around 1955 people, only .00003 % of them have to wake up at 6 o’clock every school day. This is exactly 4 people in the entire school, and is the amount of people I go to class with every morning at 6:30. Because of this my first day of high school was a little bit different from everyone else’s first day. While the rest of the kids in the town where still fast asleep in their beds I was showering and getting ready to go to a school. At first I can’t say I was especially excited to have to wake up at 6 in the morning everyday just to go to seminary each morning before school, to me school was enough, but after my first year of seminary I could see the true impact it had on me.
     Wake up at 6:00, take a quick shower, brush my teeth, throw on some clothes, go to seminary at 6:30 to 7:05, get a bowl of cereal and go to school. This was a schedule no more than three high school students could testify to, and not one non-Smkkota could truly appreciate. Going to seminary every morning and having to wake up an hour and half after most of your classmates is a big sacrifice, but is a sacrifice that almost all Smkkota high school students undergo. Why? One might ask, why wake up that early and lose so much sleep. This is the same question I asked myself after slaving over getting out of bed for the first few days of seminary. I didn’t know if it was a sacrifice I was willing to make, yet I was determined to try. After a few weeks of my freshman year I began to get the hang of it, and after the next few months it was something I had to go to each morning in order to start the day of right.
Yet seminary did not impact me simply because it was something I had to go to each day, for that wasn’t the reason at all. Seminary was not only a sacrifice but was a challenge to me personally to test my faith and my belief in my religion. It tested me not only mentally but physically as well. By going to seminary I did not only learn about the doctrine of my church but I also learned how to make sacrifices, and how to push myself into doing what I knew was right. There was no one ever forcing me to go to seminary, and if I truly wanted to I could as easily skip seminary as I could not do my homework, or not go to all my classes, but by making this one simple sacrifice of going to seminary each morning I challenged myself to do these other little things such as homework and trying to get to all my classes on time. Though I am surely not perfect at it all seminary has definitely enabled me in every aspect of my life, from making sacrifices to accomplish goals, to having the strength to push myself to do what is right.
As I look back on the years of seminary I have already completed, and the one year of seminary I have left, I sometimes wish that I could go back and truly appreciate all that seminary had to offer me. Perhaps I still do not fully comprehend this gift which has been given, but I do know without seminary my ability to make sacrifices, and my strength in making the right decisions and standing behind them would be greatly decreased. 

tq