I agree with golfer.
Full body armor while huddled in a miklat.
PAA: Popa’s already told me that I’m notin a real seminary. Apparently, real seminaries are awful and fake seminaries, like mine, rock this world.
Just to, in all seriousness, address DY:
A) My home is not dysfunctional. (I don’t know why I felt the need to reply to this except in case someone in my family happens to read it, Idunno. It just felt worth saying.)
B) In actual seriousness this time, I can see seminary being a waste of time for some people. To be really honest, if I weren’t getting a full year’s worth of college credits at the same time I’m not sure I’d be here at all.
That said, anything can be used for the positive and anything can be used for the negative. To be sure, there are girls here who have already started cutting classes to go to Ben Yehuda. There are girls who are makpid to ask which classes don’t have homework and tests in order to make sure that they have the easiest workload possible and don’t even care what the topic is. There are girls who are taking the exact minimum number of classes.
But those who want something more can find it very easily here, and that’s something that I wouldn’t give up for the world. Living in Eretz Yisrael is one thing (and a really big thing- going to the kotel Friday afternoon, on a whim, is not the sort of thing I’d be able to do while attending college in New York); learning Torah, from really knowledgeable and fantastic teachers, is another thing that shouldn’t be underestimated. For many of the girls here, this will be their last year (technically, really only year) dedicated to full-time Torah study, and that’s not something to be cheapened. Not everyone is here in order to goof off- some people do, in actuality, come to grow and learn.
Being against seminary as a DEFAULT is for sure a valid point. I don’t think I’d be here if my parents didn’t want me to be (almost more than I initially wanted to go myself, to be honest- if you’ll remember, I had a thread up a while back asking people to convince me to go at all). That said, if the whole institution of seminary didn’t exist, I would honestly doubt how useful or wise it would be. Now that it’s here, I can see it- to an extent.
Personally, I think of seminary as being like kollel- great as a concept, or something for an individual to decide to do, but pretty bad as a full lifestyle and supposedly necessary part of life. I love my seminary and I’m glad I came, but I don’t necessarily think it should have to be a default, either. In that I agree with you, DY. I just don’t think that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Seminary can be a wonderful place.