The one where I had to go back to college. And it’s around the last week of the semester and I notice that everyone around me is working really hard, studying up on the stuff they’ve learned all semester long. I realize they are studying for final exams. I also realize that it’s just after 11:00 and I have this vague feeling that maybe there is a class I am supposed to be at. So I look up my class schedule on the computer (which is a major update from an earlier version of this dream; when I was in college they had not yet invented the PC) and see that I am registered for five classes, but have only gone to one of them all semester. And now it is time for finals.
I have variants of this dream all the time. I’m always surprised at how universal some dream types are. The general plot points in my version of the dream: Last semester/quarter of college, I need four classes to pass, and there’s one or two I realize I haven’t been to all year and have no idea where the classroom is. Or those one or two I was supposed to drop, but forgot about it, and that would affect my GPA somehow that I couldn’t graduate. I also have an “alternate life timeline” version in my dreams where I go to graduate school (which I never have gone to or even considered going to) and the same sort of thing happens, where I have classes I didn’t drop and don’t even know where they’re located on campus.
My frustrated school dreams are usually set in high school - I have all kinds of assignments due and haven’t done any of them.
Last night I had one of the other recurring dreams - showing up somewhere naked.
Oh, so that was you…
Yeah, once again, I apparently forgot to put clothes on before going out.
Nice birthmark, BTW.
I never had this one until the last 6-12 months, and they’re horribly realistic, as in, I’ll wake up and wonder how I got all the way to work on the train with no one pointing out that I was completely naked. In one of them I got to work (which looked remarkably like my high school) and ducked into an empty office when I realized I was naked, then proceeded to us a plastic trash bag to cover myself.
But I’ve not yet had a back in school but didn’t study dream.
I have a similiar dream as well, except mine takes place in high school and a lot of the dream is taken up by my search for the classrooms in which those missing classes take place.
I also have had a college-based dream in which I inadvertently miss a final exam - but this has an actual base in reality, where one year I did in fact read the final exam schedule incorrectly. I showed up in the right classroom at the right time of day - but the wrong day. My final had been the day before. Cue the growing horror as people walk in to the classroom, and I don’t recognize any of them. And then an instructor I’ve never seen before writes the course number up on the board - and it’s for some graduate level business class, not my undergraduate level geology class.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Luckily for me, my actual instructor was still in town and allowed me to take the final in a conference room in the department suite. :smack:
Still didn’t keep me from having that dream for years though …
I occasionally have the high school ones, too, but it’s the college ones that have been most common over the last fifteen years. It always feels great to wake up and think “it’s okay, you graduated, you never have to write another paper/take another exam again!”
Never had the naked dream, though.
Oooh, I have that dream all the time. It’s usually algebra or something similar that I’ve not been doing the work in, something that I would have had to be diligent at if I wanted to pass. I usually realise at some point that I’ve already left school and don’t need to worry about such things. Other times it’s the first day and I can’t find my classes at all, and I can’t read my schedule properly, or I’m trying desperately to get my stuff together and get to school on time. Sometimes I’m naked as well, just to add insult to injury.
Once I had the “oh no, it’s finals day and I haven’t been to algebra all term nor done any of the homework” dream, and in the midst of agonizing that I would fail, I suddenly thought “So what? It won’t be the end of the world, I’ll just take the class over again and pass it next time.” That felt like a revelation, and I didn’t have the dream again for a long time after that.
Oh! I have that dream regularly, too! In fact, I just had it again last week! Usually I wind up spending at least part of the dream digging through my backpack for my class schedule, since I can’t even remember what classes I signed up for and for some reason haven’t been going to all semester. (Doubly strange because I pretty much never skipped class in college, and here a whole dream where that’s all I did)
Usually my high school dreams involve trying to get into my locker, but not being able to remember my combination. The bell rings and the halls clear out, all while I’m desperatly trying to get at whatever it is that I need inside that locker, knowing I’ll be in a lot of trouble when I finally show up to class.
I don’t get the school dreams so much anymore, nor do I get the naked dreams. Thirteen years into my career I get the dreams where I am back at my first job and went through a whole shift without doing anything for this one patient.
He was on tube feed, had a severe head injury, was aggressive, and violent. He was dependent on his nurses and care aides for everything. I still wake up and panic at the thought that I left hims all shift without medications or feeds. Then I remember I haven’t worked there in 12 years, I was a new grad and had my work checked (usually) by a senior nurse, and that if anything he was probably better off with the new grads who weren’t burned out and cynical at the job yet.
Still hate that dream though.
I still have the ‘college exam in a class I didn’t even know I was taking’ and ‘forgot my high school locker combo’ dreams all the time. Sometimes both at the same time.
I also sometimes get one where I’m trying to drive a car over a bridge, but the bridge is falling apart, the wind is blowing really hard and I have to keep the wheels on a super-thin pair of rails rather than a proper roadbed.
I started telling that one to my siblings, and found out they all had it too. My oldest brother thinks it’s from a vacation where my parents were driving us across a causeway in the Florida keys during a storm, but I was only a toddler then and have no conscious memory of it.
I have a recurring dream where I’m, er, really flexible. It’s not something I ever think about during my waking hours (much).
I used to dream I had a bad nicotine craving and lit up. I’d feel guilty about it in the dream. The odd thing is that I’ve never really had a nic fit since quitting decades ago.
I had stopped having these, some 20 years out of uni.
So then I went back to uni and now have them roughly fortnightly.
So badly, in fact, that when it IS exam time, I print out the exam schedule and keep it buy me during my swot week, so I can touch/look/feel it every 20 minutes or so - or ever five on the day of the exams.
Stupid brain.
I read somewhere that this is one of the most common dreams, along with flying and being naked in public places.
I’ve had all of these, but I was surprised that the “impending unstudied for test” is so common. I had a version of this that was so realistic and detailed, and covered such a long stretch of time (an entire semester) that I had to sit down and account for my time to convince myself that I hadn’t really gone back to college at some point.
Considering my lackadaisacal habits as an undergrad, the dream has a basis in reality. That actually happened to me once; after routinely skipping my genetics class, I showed up one day to find the instructor passing out the midterm. I considered faking a heart attack.
Anyone else here have the “teeth falling out” dream? Buddy Holly mentions it in his last letter to his parents; one of the other band members had it. Mine are usually not only falling out, but crumbling to fragments so that there’s no hope of repairing them. I’m told that’s a “helplessness” dream. Between that and the “failing classes”, “can’t get my stuff together” and “naked in public” dreams, I reckon there’s a lot of helplessness going on…
Going back to school as a 40-something adult for a second degree brought the skipping class dream to a screeching halt. The second time I was much more serious than the first.
Yep, the teeth falling out or crumbling one is probably my most common dream. I’ve had it dozens and dozens of times.