It seems that this is a fairly common recurring dream that folks have.
It’s the end of the semester (or school year), finals time, and you haven’t been to a particular class for quite some time, perhaps at all…anxiety ensues.
What does this represent?
G’day
A couple of times I have actually missed a whole semester of classes. That’s what you get with bipolar disorder. My results those semesters weren’t up to my usual standard.
Regards,
Agback
I don’t know what it represents, but I have a co-worker from India, and she says that she has had those dreams, too.
I used to have that one all the time. I believe it’s as you described: an expression of waking anxiety by your subconscious. I have that dream when I’m stressed. Alternately, I have a dream about being back in the military or driving my Jeep through some particularly harrowing countryside. Same root cause, different realization.
I once stumbled upon an article (it may have been in Psychology Today) that had an explanation of this phenomenon.
I’ll be damned if I remember anything about it. I really hope someone comes up with a link.
I get a variation on this dream where I’m in high school, the bell is ringing to start the next period, and I’m standing at my locker vapor-locked because I cannot remember the combination to my locker.
I’m 36 and I still have this dream. I had the “showing up at work with no clothes on” dream a few months back. First time for that.
The best part about having this dream after you have graduated is waking up and then realizing you never have to take a final exam again.
YES! Hurrah!
I just had my same reoccuring dream last night. It’s either I failed high school english and I have to take it again to graduate or I show up for the final for linear algebra but I haven’t been there all semester.
I think it does have to do with some underlying anxiety or something you feel is unfinished business.
For me, I had decided to put off graduate school and now I am in a career (completely different than what I thought I would be doing) & married, etc… and so it’s not easy for me to make the shift back to school.
I have this nightmare. Either I forgot to drop calculus and must learn calculus overnight and get an A on the exam to pass, or it’s a history class I forgot I’d signed up for and much write a research paper and don’t even have a topic. I think the last time I had the latter, in the dream it was a Hawaiian history class, and I started to cook up some half-assed thesis about the surf shops in Santa Barbara’s appropriation of Hawaiian culture somehow being analogous to the fact that there aren’t any real parrots in Hawai’i. . . and the library I was trying to use was arranged by some utterly different cataloguing system and spread out over a bunch of narrow carpeted split level floors with odd stairways tucked here and there. Typical dream wierdness.
I have that stinking dream all too often! If I’d known that 19 years after graduating I’d still be dreaming about missing class, I would never have cut a single class. Never.
It happens to me occasionally and the last time I was in any class was 1979.
The one I love is the one where you start walking and the steps get longer and longer until you can hold yourself in the air indefinitely and then it’s just like flying.
But the never been to class all semester is a true bummer.
Yep. I’ve never flown like Superman in a dream, but I done some serious “skimming” many, many times. I’ll give a good push off with a foot, and I go just a-skimming a foot or so above the ground.
Sometimes, when I feel myself losing “altitude,” I’ll spread my arms out and trail my legs behind to get that last little bit of “lift” and skim just a little more.
I had that dream often. I call it the “lost class dream”. I stopped having it when I was about 25.
My recurring nightmares included:
“Naked School Day”; 7-12 years old.
“Where’s My Penis?”: 12-15 years old.
“The Lost Class” 15-25 years old.
Other than the ‘falling’ right after dozing off, I don’t really remember many dreams.
I have this dream all the time…I hate it! Another similar dream
is that I’m back in high school and it’s time for class but I can’t
remember the combination to my locker and I stand there trying
to remember while everyone else goes to class. Weird.
I’m a Junior in HS right now, and I almost every other night, I have a dream that I either wake up late, or I’m screwing around, or whatever, but I’m going to be late for school. School starts at 8:05 and in the dreams, my clock is always at like 7:59 and I have to get dressed and drive to school, etc in 6 minutes. And I never make it either. But I always wake up with my heart pounding, feeling like I’m going to puke.
I’ve always found this dream to be strange though, as I wouldn’t really be freaking out if I was late for school. I mean, it’s not that big of a deal, but in my dream, I just have to get there before the bell rings. So I’m thinking that it must represent something bigger than school…
G’day
Another of my class-related recurring dreams is that there has been an administrative error, and I have to go back and take a class in something absolutely trivial in high school or even primary school or They are going to cancel my Higher School Certificate, which will make my degree invalid. So there I am back in junior high or even primary school, surrounded by munchkins and studying trigonometry or being told how to hold a pencil.
Do other people get that one? Or is it perhaps a recollection of the fact that at one stage the Department of Education was trying to insist that I repeat 6th grade because I skipped over 3rd grade?
Regards,
Agback
I still have the “didn’t go to class” dream more than 20 years after getting my BS.
I had an actual experience that was the opposite. I went to class all semester and then missed the final exam. Somehow I missed the fact that the prof decided to have the exam on the last day of class instead of the scheduled exam week date, and I missed the last day to do a job interview (last semester before I graduated). I called the prof when I couldn’t find the exam, and he wouldn’t budge. He flunked me. It was a free elective but I needed the stinkin’ 3 credits to graduate.
I’ve had that dream and fairly recently, and I graduated college in 1950, with my last formal schooling in 1963.
I’ve also had dreams where I had a job and had no idea whatever that I was supposed to do.
Or I’m supposed to take a plane without knowing what airline, flight or sometimes even what airport.
I wish you hadn’t started this. I’m getting scared.
Talk about a lost sheep in the tall weeds.
Related to the High School Locker one – the bell has rung to start the next class, and I cannot remember which class is next and where it’s located.
If that is puzzling, my HS ‘rotated’ classes, to avoid having the same class get the afterlunch slump each day. So one day class order as ABCDEFG, the next AGBCDEF, then AFGBCDE and so on.
In my dream I was out sick for a while, so I don’t know what yesterday’s schedule was, thus I don’t know what today’s is.
If the ‘elaborate’ mode, I go to the principal’s office to get a copy of my schedule, but then don’t remember what my name is. 
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OK, who has had (or can explain) this one that I have once or twice a month:
I am sitting reading a book, magazine or newspaper, either out loud or with such concentration and vividness that it seems I can actually hear my words, sort of like vocalizing them before pronouncement. What I hear is frequently something of a current event nature and makes absolute sense as I hear/read it, and yet it all is apparently being made up out of my psyche more or less ad lib. I usually become self-aware that this is a dream and try, but am not successful in figuring out how/why I have the details so spot-on. When I wake up I can remember nothing of the story I have been reading, although at the time everything was crystal clear.
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