I was reading the comics page over breakfast this morning, and in the first panel of “Rose Is Rose” the main character was thinking the following:
Well, I did an extreme double-take upon reading that, since I used to have that exact same dream on a fairly regular basis [it’s funny, because I kept having it for years after I graduated from college]. For me, it was always a Math class of some sort.
Anyway, I never thought that I was the only one to have that sort of dream, but I never imagined it was so common that it would be referred to in a comic strip. So, tell me… Has everybody else had this dream as well, or should I sue Pat Brady (the author of Rose Is Rose) for invasion of privacy?
I don’t think I ever had it, but a lot of people I know have.
It’s so common that it’s the subject of a great gag in the film Top Secret (by the brothers Zucker and Abrahams, of Airplane and The Naked Gun). Val Kilmer plays an agent in a Communist/Nazi Germany who, at this point in the film, has been captured. They decide to torture him. In the middle of being whipped, he passes out, and has “The School Dream”, dreaming that there was a Big Test that morning, and he missed it. He wakes up, and breathes a sigh of relief to find that he hasn’t missed the test – he’s only being tortured by Communist/Nazis.
I haven’t had quite the same dream, but I have had something similar:
Although I graduated from University over 3 years ago, I still occassionally have nightmares about suddenly being back at uni, in an exam but with no idea what the exam is about and subsequently failing.
I have a vague memory of seeing that film years ago, but I don’t think that’s quite the same “school dream” to which I am referring. The key elements in my dream are that there’s a class I signed up for and then immediately forgot about, only to remember the day of the final exam. It’s a moment of absolute panic as I suddenly realize that I “have” to take an exam for which I am completely and absolutely unprepared. And, as I mentioned before, I only started having this dream after I completed all my schooling. In fact, for awhile I was having it so often that I began to suspect it was actually a memory instead of just a dream (it really was just a dream, though).
Exactly. I still have this dream. I never had it during all my years of education (high school, college, grad school). Not once. Now, at the age of 43, with school many years behind me, I have it fairly regularly.
I think it’s a reaction to the increasing complexity of life as one grows older. Life gets so complicated there really could be something one has forgotten about until the last minute.
My version was being completely prepared for the class/exam, but being completely unable to get there. No matter what I tried, I’d get later and later…
Barry – I don’t see the difference. Kilmer’s character wasn’t in school, after all – he was just dreaming that he was back in school and utterly unprepared for the exam he didn’t know was imminent. Then he wakes up and breathes a sigh of relief – he ISN’T in school. He DOESN’T have to take an exam. He’s only being tortured by Communist Nazis.
I had it once or twice, and I’ve had Sublight’s version several times. Also, I never missed a single class throughout my four years of law school, so pretty frequently I’d have dreams where I got caught in traffic and missed a class or just forgot about one. I still have that dream every few months despite the fact that I’ve been out of school for nearly two years now.
I never had that dream specifically. I used to have bad dreams all the time about being back in high school, but it was never related to being unprepared for an exam. Most often in these dreams, it was determined that when I was in high school, I had skipped gym class once too often and had to go back to school for another year to complete the requirements. In these dreams it never occurred to me that I was under no legal obligation to return. After I woke up, I always realized that no diploma is worth going through that hell again. I graduated high school in 1987 and stopped having those terrible dreams about three years ago. I never once had a bad dream about being back in college.
Well, as I said, I only have a vague memory of this movie, but your original post stated that the character was stressed (in the dream) because he missed an exam, not because he was unprepared for it. In my dream, I’m stressed because I just found out there is an exam I will have to take for which I am unprepared, not one that I missed.
I started having this same dream after a bad thing actually happened - I was in college and I read the final exam schedule wrong. I thought my Geology final was on a Thursday afternoon, when in fact it had been the day before. So imagine my panic when the room starts to fill up with people I’ve never seen before, and a professor I’ve never seen before comes in and writes “Final for Accounting 435” up on the board. ACK!
I ran all the way to the Geology department and was very lucky to find my professor still there - he was due to leave the next morning to go pick rocks somewhere on the West Coast. He let me take the final right there and then.
The funny thing about my dream, though, is that I’m always in high school instead of college, despite the Actual Bad Thing being a college event.
My husband has a dream wherein officials from his college contact him and tell him that a mistake was made and he didn’t really graduate at all and they are taking away his degree.
I have that dream or the one where it just keeps getting later and later fairly frequently and I graduated from college 18 years ago. I also dream that I call into work saying I’ll be 10 minutes late and the next thing I know it’s five o’clock. There are always dramatic sunsets in that one to demonstrate how late it is.
I’ve have also had that dream, no matter what I’d do, I couldn’t get to the room in time or some other barrier would pop up. The funny thing is I never missed an exam, not once in my entire college years.
The other dream, one that I’ll likely dream of tonight after having read this thread, is where I’m back in high school, everything is normal, I’m walking to class with my book bag in hand and suddenly realize I have no clothes on. What is up with that dream? I haven’t had that one in awhile but I’ll bet I’ve dreamt that at least a hundred times.
I have “the” school dream and the one where you can’t get to class. I’ll also have a variation of the school dream where I know I’ve been to class and I know the final is tomorrow, but for the life of me can’t remember a single thing about it. Hmmm…
I’ve also had that dream, no matter what I’d do, I couldn’t get to the room in time or some other barrier would pop up. The funny thing is I never missed an exam, not once in my entire college years.
The other dream, one that I’ll likely dream of tonight after having read this thread, is where I’m back in high school, everything is normal, I’m walking to class with my book bag in hand and suddenly realize I have no clothes on. What is up with that dream? I haven’t had that one in awhile but I’ll bet I’ve dreamt that at least a hundred times.
Me, I keep having dreams about some sort of “moving-in week” scenario at the end of which I am to start on a course that I myself don’t know what it’s going to be or even if I care for the subject.
Somehow my subconscious seems to be under the impression I could be drafted into graduate/professional school against my will…