All 9th Graders Who Want to Go to Sem!!

Many people are in 10,11, and 12 forsure but things come up I foundout someone I know has been dying to go and didn’t get in to any of her 3 choices……

Purpleone please try to get me the name and number of person for my friend thnxs

I was going to go for elevnth grade, but they didn’t want 16 year olds.But now I’m accepted for next year (one year early) and I’m so glad I waited, because I’m a much stronger person than I was a year ago.

Veltz Meshugener-not to start anything controversial or anything, just responding 🙂 your generalization that going to seminary is something “that someone else pays for” is not true for many of the people that i know. yes, i got scholarships, and yes my parents paid some, but i paid for a chunk. and my spending money was MY money that I earned…and it wasn’t like the scholarships just landed in my lap… i offered my parents that i wouldn’t go. but yeah, sarcastic as you might have meant your comment of being important for Hashem, i asked a shailah, several times, and for me, it was important to go. and there were many girls in seminary with me who had similiar financial situations, who helped pay their way and who spent their own money.

that’s not to say there weren’t girls who had it as a given that they would go, adn who had daddy’s credit card… tehre were. but it just bothers me when people make generalizations about how spoiled we all are spending money that our parents don’t have for something we mgiht not necessarily need.

ok rant over 🙂

and i apologize profusely for any grammar/spelling mistakes

and not everyone in 12th gr is dying to go

Smile e. Face: If you know people who had a substantial portion of the cost saved up on their own, and used that to pay for it, then I apologize for suggesting that such people are having others pay for it. The criticism in that case is that they are terribly brainwashed if they would spend $8,000, which much be incredibly hard to earn as a high school girl, and blow it on seminary.

One of Many: It would be silly for me to jump to the conclusion that it’s a waste of money. Money is worth different things to different people and so is seminary. But in the context of someone who 1. Doesn’t have much money and 2. worked very hard to get what little money they have; I think it’s unlikely to be a good decision, barring some sort of undue or unhealthy social pressure.

No, good point. Let me rephrase a bit:

Money is worth different things to different people and so is seminary. But in the context of someone who 1. Doesn’t have much money and 2. worked very hard to get what little money they have; I think it’s unlikely to be a financially prudent decision based on beneficial analysis of what money and seminary are worth to that person. In such a case, a decision to spend the money on seminary is likely based on some sort of undue or unhealthy social pressure.

First you say that money and seminary mean different things to different people. Then you say “…it’s [?] unlikely to be a financially prudent decision based on beneficial analysis of what money and seminary are worth to that person.” Given that money and seminary mean different things to different people, how exactly were you able to evaluate the financial prudence of the decision “based on…what money and seminary are worth to that person”? Do you know this person or something?

Although money and seminary are worth different amounts to different people, there is a range within which one can surmise the decisions are made with healthy motivations, and outside of which one can surmise that the motivations were unhealthy. As an analogy, if a wealthy person spends $140 on sneakers, it can be unobjectionable, while if a desperately poor person spends that same amount of money, it would lead one to question the prudence of that decision, despite the poor buyer’s clear indication that he values the sneakers over insulin for his diabetic grandmother.

Also, how exactly does having less money and it having been harder to come by make someone less capable of making “financially prudent decision based on beneficial analysis”? I didn’t say that the person is inherently less capable. I just said if they were to make this particular decision it would likely be based on an unhealthy motivation.

Finally: Can you explain how this statement

…you get to do all kinds of fun things that someone else pays for, while convincing yourself that it’s important for Hashem that you do it.

segued into what you have just explained?

I don’t think they are necessarily related, except insofar as they reflect a certain amount of scorn for seminary as anything other than 10 months of camp. The initial scorn addressed the supposed value to Hashem that allows people to justify spending other people’s money on extended camp. The second part was addressing the scenario of a poor HS graduate paying for seminary themselves.

As an analogy, if a wealthy person spends $140 on sneakers

To illustrate this with a more apt comparison: a person chooses to attend a specific university. The tuition may be beyond his current earning ability, but the impact that the resources and mentorship of the program he chose may have on his future career, work ethic, and personal sense of motivation may very well turn out to be worth the cost. Or his time there could be a total bust, leaving him having just blown an enormous amount of money on nothing. The point is, whatever the outcome, it is impossible to assign any price or even a price range (as the result can range from nothing to something no amount of money can buy) to such an investment.

[correct me if I am mistaken] do not seem to have been developed by a close and objective study of the subject), and therefore cannot be successfully asserted as the basis of a sound line of reasoning.

People often make artificial judgements out of what they perceive to be necessity. In reality, though, they are not actually assigning value but merely using the appearance of doing so to assuage or inflate their sense of self-importance (which may have tangential value of itself, but does not create a definition for the value of the object in question).

And Seminary really doesn’t seem to be a hard case.

Is this because you have done a close and objective study of the subject, or because you feel this is so?

Seminary rox! Go to seminary! Go based on your style. They have a ton of seminaries which fits everyones style. Like peninim you go there if you want to go on a lot of trips, darchei bina to become more frumer, ateres to learn but not as much as bjj, bjj to learn a lot

my sister, mother, sister-in-laws and friends sure didn’t all go to seminary. I did though. One word i’d never compare it to though is camp. Though perhaps some nights at our dorm were just fun fun fun. When we weren’t doing jobs, chores, making supper, settling disagreements, assuaging hurt feelings, and working hard to learn to live with people of opposite backgrounds and personalities.

popa:

I don’t know why you think it is impossible to value seminary and to make a generalization that it is a waste of money.

I do not know what you mean by that, but as far as I can make out, that is not what I was trying to say.

Nor do I know why you think it requires a close and objective study for people who are living in that world.

I believe the exact opposite. I have no relatives that attended seminary, and wasn’t even entirely aware of what it was until I was in tenth grade. In fact, around that time, I was rather biased against it, being that so many people were being so ridiculous and hysterical about it. I looked into the matter further, though, and came to the conclusion that while it is easy to be dissuaded by the enormous amount of silliness and ill-judgment that most invest in it, it is something that is impossible to make any definitive judgments about. There are too many factors involved (admittedly, the most important being the silliness of the subject). Being surrounded and personally affected by that silliness has colored your view of this.

In a world where your wife, your sisters, your mother, your sisters-in-law, your wife’s friends and co-workers, etc, have all gone to seminary

And perhaps all of your relatives were in the “total bust” category of my earlier analogy. I think this supports my ideas more than it refutes them.

VM:

I readily admit that the hashkafah and halacha that girls learn in seminary is not something that I value at all, mostly because I believe that it’s not legitimate halacha or hashkafah.

[…]it is not susceptible to “objective” studies because it does not purport to offer anything “objective”.

My point precisely!

And as PBA pointed out, my mother, wife and sisters all went to seminary and I saw nothing in their experiences that justified the stress and financial strain that it involved.

See above.

vm- which of those things don’t you do at home?

Trips- educational ones and 2 fun ones. Of which many opted out because there was a fee. Parties- chanuka, rosh chodesh shvat, shabbaton and graduation. Hang out? In the dorm yes. Don’t highschoolers and post-sem girls, and married women hang out too?

Why is it so camp-like? Maybe a better comparison would be home-like

and I think that using generalizations instead of clear thinking is a cop out. Rots your brain. And is almost as bad relying on statistics.

Popa, thank you for that inspiring bit of doggerel.

OOM: You’ve inspired me.

popa- o.O what did you have to drink today? Or maybe the better question is how much

and here I thought you so clever for making all that up whilst drunk.

T613: See the new topic I just spend 20 minutes working on. 🙂 Oh well, it was fun.

And Popa, how are you so baki in kid’s tapes?

Then how can your dear tinokos shel beis rabbon know it by heart?

OOM: I meant telling you, whoops, it went from my eyes to my fingertips without bypassing my brain 🙂