« Sopranos Talk | Main | Raffle! »
June 05, 2007
It was the philosophy final that did it
You know, when I was in college, I would finish the semester, go home (across town) and basically sleep for two days. A week with no sleep will have that effect. I guess the first day of summer vacation does that to you...even if it's kindergarten you've just left behind:
Of his own free will, this afternoon, collapsed on the couch.
By the way, 25+ years hence, whenever I have anxiety dreams, they are always school dreams. When I was teaching and shortly afterwards, I became the teacher, not the student - and the theme was that it was exam time, I was short on copies of the exams and the copier was broken. But I'm back as a student now, always about to take an exam in a class I didn't go to. Either accidentally or on purpose. Will I never graduate?!
Update: Well, we have more teacher and student dreams, with musician and mom anxiety dreams added in. (Years ago, when Christopher and David were babies, I would have dreams in which I could hear them crying, but couldn't get to them. Don't have that one anymore.). What an interesting collection!
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
Comments
In my anxiety dreams I also shifted from student to teacher after I had been teaching a while. Then after several years of being a stay at home mom (only teaching part time), I began to experience a new kind of anxiety dream—waking up on Christmas morning and no presents under the tree! Give me a plain old showing-up-for-the-test-unprepared dream anytime.
Posted by: Joy at Jun 5, 2007 3:32:19 PM
After a horrifying spate of seminary dreams right after I left the seminary, I have reverted to having either school dreams (the same as you - exam time, and I realize there's a class I haven't been to all semester), or waiter dreams (all the other waitstaff has been let go for the night and the restaurant fills up with customers).
Even in my dreams though, the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila comes to mind, "Nada te turbe, nada te espante...: Let nothing disturb thee, nothing afright thee, all things are passing, God never changeth. Patient endurance attaineth to all things. Who God possesseth, in nothing is wanting, alone God sufficeth."
It works in dreams as well as real life!
Posted by: Tim Ferguson at Jun 5, 2007 3:34:28 PM
I teach HS theater, so in my dreams there's always a kid who, opening night, doesn't or can't go on stage and I ALWAYS oblige by going on in their place; usually with no idea what any of the lines are. It's a twist on the classic exam dream. I have a friend who is a principal and she dreams that she shows up for the first day of school, but kids have actually been coming for a week. I personally don't see what's so scary about this dream--if the school has been running okay without you for a week, what's the problem??
Posted by: Kelly Ford at Jun 5, 2007 4:07:14 PM
Story of my life too! But perhaps it's because we students don't focus a whole lot during the actual semester... so learning a semester's worth of work in 2 days IS very stressful. :) lifeconsistency.blogspot.com
Posted by: Michelle at Jun 5, 2007 4:08:47 PM
My worst school anxiety dreams always happen when I'm pregnant!
Then it's the old standard exam with no prep dream, except with the subplot that i'm a pregnant teen mother. In the dreams (since I'm my high school self) I never know how on earth I got pregnant or who the father might be....
And on top of school, I have morning sickness and random people pressuring me to marry various gross teenage guys just so the baby will have a father.....
In the worst of these, my pre-schooler and toddler are along too, and I'm trying to get books out of a locker without losing my kids in the throng of teenagers....
Even when I'm a teenager again in my dreams, I'm still a mom.... weird, huh?
Posted by: Deirdre Mundy at Jun 5, 2007 4:34:53 PM
My exam dream, which used to wake me up in a cold sweat, started when studying for the Bar Exam, a two day event. Years ago, it used to be on Tuesdays (multiple choice) and Wednesdays (essays) in Michigan, but was changed to Wednesdays and Thursdays, with the multiple choice last. My dream was ALWAYS that I showed up for the exam on Wedneday instead of Tuesday....
Posted by: fred at Jun 5, 2007 4:42:59 PM
Anxiety dreams almost always involve Civil Defense broadcasts, sirens, and the special-effects shots from The Day After.
They happen about once a month, just to remind me that I grew up in the '80's. Blah.
Posted by: Paul Stokell at Jun 5, 2007 4:43:13 PM
I have the exact same dream: that I have to sit an exam for the college class I forgot to drop.
It must somehow tap into one of those universal prehistoric-human fears, like tickling makes us react as if there are spiders crawling on us. I wonder what fear it is.
Posted by: bearing at Jun 5, 2007 4:57:28 PM
When I was in seminary 5 years ago, I always have a nightmare that i did not finished college and I am in limbo, then when I woke up I said to myself how can this be since I am in theology and completing my M.Div.
Posted by: Fr. Gary V. at Jun 5, 2007 5:04:24 PM
I'm applying to seminary. I recently had a dream that one of my long-ago ex-girlfriends showed up with proof at my ordination that we had been validly married and that there was no way I could become a priest because I was "all hers, forever."
And the worst thing was, it was the psycho ex-girlfriend that I was GLAD I broke up with :-((
At least I wouldn't have had to spend anytime in Purgatory!
Posted by: Brian at Jun 5, 2007 5:51:09 PM
Waitress dreams here - always some ridiculous problem in the kitchen, and my table is waiting and waiting, and I just can't get back to it however I try. One was absurd enough that I was able to laugh it off as a dream, within the dream.
Ugh. Does that mean I'll still have the same anxiety dreams years hence?
Posted by: Peggy H. at Jun 5, 2007 6:46:25 PM
Thank God I'm not the only one! Although usually it involves me having forgotten to go to the exam (or if I make it, I've not been to the class ever). I must admit, though, there are those days where I wake up and wonder if it might be a good thing if it were true. ;-)
Posted by: JACK at Jun 5, 2007 6:49:11 PM
I know a lot of people, e.g. my wife, the former straight-A student, who have these academic crisis dreams. As a lifelong under-achiever who never took school seriously enough, I have never been troubled in this way.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at Jun 5, 2007 7:21:20 PM
I have a recurring exam dream. I forget until a little before the final exam that I am registered in a class. I have to take the exam and the professor looks at me like I am the biggest loser. I am just dying with anxiety. I also have a dream where I am rushing to get to the exam but try as I might I can't get going. I drop things, I forget my #2 pencil, I can't, for some reason run. AGH!
Posted by: jane at Jun 5, 2007 7:35:13 PM
Amy, that is a great picture, a real keeper!
Posted by: Peg at Jun 5, 2007 7:43:58 PM
I find myself rushing around in malls, forced to shop for things. Science fictional things. In futuristic malls. That don't have multiple floors; they have multiple levels in time and space.
Okay, that was only once. But it was cool! :)
Nah, usually after the first stressful day of doing something new, I find myself doing it all night, too. Pain in the butt, it is.
Posted by: Maureen at Jun 5, 2007 8:07:20 PM
Only a few weeks ago I dreamed that it was time to take a final exam and somehow I'd forgoten to go to class. I woke up in a cold sweat. Does anybody ever get over high school?
Posted by: dymphna at Jun 5, 2007 8:23:55 PM
Musician dreams here, a variant on the theme: I'm on stage, either 1) having known for months that this recital was coming up but neglecting to ever practice, or 2) shoved out on stage at the last minute to fill in for someone else. In both cases, I have a weird idea that I can fake it, although I slowly begin to realize that I can't fake it, and that's when the fear sets in. (It doesn't help that I am a musician, albeit one who hardly ever practices.)
Posted by: mj at Jun 5, 2007 8:50:02 PM
I've had the dream many times in the 28 years since I graduated, but I also have to admit I did it in real life too. The spring semester of 1976 was not good for me.
Posted by: sj at Jun 5, 2007 9:14:16 PM
I, too, have the student dream: it's final exam time and I forgot to drop the class.
I also have cantor nightmares: I'm cantoring, I'm late for Mass, I forgot my hymnal and/or responsorial book, I can't find any music, and I have no idea what we're singing. I try to go to see the organist, but suddenly the choir loft, where she is playing, is six miles away, and I'm moving. so. slowly.
Posted by: Jeannine at Jun 5, 2007 9:24:44 PM
I have the exact same dream: that I have to sit an exam for the college class I forgot to drop.
Me, too! It's terrible, isn't it?
But it's much better than my anxiety dream from high school, in which I became pregnant by taking defective Excedrin and could not convince anyone of these bizarre circumstances. A teacher told me that was the "most Catholic dream he'd ever heard of."
Posted by: ATP just this once at Jun 5, 2007 11:29:37 PM
I think these "glitch" dreams are about our minds thinking about what we need to do after we wake up and in our dreams our minds are aware that we are asleep and thus totally unfit to do anything that requires wakefulness. The way our minds symbolize this dilemma is through "incompetence" dreams. That is just my two-bit theory coming out of my own dream experiences.
Peace and All Good Things!!
Posted by: Will Moore SFO at Jun 5, 2007 11:44:53 PM
Before I could drive, I had the anxiety dream of slipping my Dad's car into drive instead of reverse and smashing through our living room window. Now, some 2 and half years after graduating university, I have the student exam anxiety dream. It's good to know I'm not the only one.
Posted by: colm at Jun 6, 2007 2:44:17 AM
Forgot to mention that I actually had a reverse "forgot the final" dream in real life: I missed a lot of sessions of a history class in college (to practice -- see musician dream above) and thus did not know that the history final had been replaced by a paper. I showed up on the morning of the final, waited in the darkened room about fifteen minutes, went to see the professor in his office, who exasperatedly gave me until the end of the day to write the paper. I got a "C" in the class.
Posted by: mj at Jun 6, 2007 2:55:39 AM
Fasacinating, and here is the other side. After 40 years of college teaching and 9 years in retirement, my most frequent anxiety dream is that it is finals time, and I realize that there is a class that I have not been able to get to, for one reason or the other, for the entire semester. So for those who are anxious on the exam taking side, perhaps the prof has forgotten too. So take solace.
Posted by: Dad at Jun 6, 2007 3:48:13 AM
