Yes, I still get that one occasionally, roughly once a month or so. Of course, I also almost missed an exam once (not a final). The professor was in the habit of giving midterm exams at strange times, so as not to take up time in the regularly scheduled lecture hours. One evening I was having dinner with some friends and realized I had to take an exam **RIGHT NOW[\b]. I arrived about 40 minutes late, but the professor let me take the whole thing, fortunately.
My most common reoccurring nightmare is the “forgotten class” dream, and I’ve been out of college for two years now. I had no idea that this dream was so common. I’ve also had the “forgotten locker combination” and the “late for class but can’t find my classroom/forgot my schedule” dream.
They all seem to fall under the same general category: “a lack of proper organization or preparedness results in serious negative consequences and/or embarrassment”. Since I’m a very organized and detail-oriented person who always showed up for class and cared very much about my grades, I can’t help but wonder if the other sufferers of this sort of dream fit a similar personality mold.
It just occured to me that another dream I have had from time to time is similar to the “forgotten class” dream; I dream I’ve forgotten where I put my mother. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t visited my mother in the longest time, and that I can’t remember what nursing home she is in.
When I awake and I recall that my mother is deceased, that it was I who put her in a nursing home, and that I was the only one of her children who visited her regularly, I feel tremendous relief.
I too have dreams about wrecking my car. In some the car wrecks itself; it’s as though the front wheels lock up, and the car lurches forward, parts flying everywhere as it simply falls apart.
I have one like that but it’s Marching Band. We’re just about to step out onto the field for the big half-time show and I have my flute but no music. When I express my panic to someone else in the band, they say, “Music? We don’t need music. We’ve got it memorized!” AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!
I’m male and I never had the lost penis dream, nor the locker combination one.
However, the ‘suddenly remembering I’m in a class I haven’t been to all semster and it’s past drop date so I must study like crazy’ dream, I had ALLLLLLL the time.
It was almost always English comp. No big surprise if you read my posts. 
Like another poster, I never had that dream until after I graduated. It then plagued me for 10+years. So much so that it was irritating.
FYI, I used to teach College and 1-2 times per year I would have a student come into my office and tell me they forgot to drop the class. They would beg me. I was always very lenient about this if they hadn’t been to class since the first couple of weeks. I didn’t have the power to drop them but I could give an incomplete. This gave them a year to retake it before it was automatically turned into an F.
So people do have that experience in RL. 
I was also a real nice prof. I would actually CALL my non-attending students 1-2 days before drop cutoff date and inform them they were still in my class. Have you ever had a college prof. do that for you? Hmmmm?
Well not so much lost as severed and reattatched…
Andymurph64
You are to be congratulated for such an understanding attitude.
If you scroll up to the CookinWithGas posting, that professor was a little bit stricter. All right - he was a s**thead !!
I’ve had plenty of “lost class” dreams. Sometimes it takes this twist - I have to go back to college to make up some forgotten class in order to keep my degree. But when I go back, I am at my current age, but all my college buddies are there like the day I left. I realize that I have a substantial bank account (compared to when I was in school) and my only responsibility is that one class. PARTY TIME!
I’m very disapointed to wake up.
Another recurring dream that has almost the same feeling of anxiety. I’m flying an airplane (I’m a recreational pilot) and suddenly I realize that I’m smack in the middle of some heavily controlled airspace (like over Chicago or New York) but I have no clearance - don’t even have the radio on!
This one usually wakes me up before I can do anything.
That’s what I always called them. In college and for a few years after I had them regularly - like at least once a week.
This week I had one again for the first time in about five years - so I’m really excited to see this thread. I thought it was just me, since none of my friends had them.
Wow, I’m amazed to find all you other people having the same dream about forgetting about the class until the last day of the semester. I’ve had that a bunch of times, but didn’t know so many others have too. And the basic details remain so similar across such a big number of people. Something universal is going on here.
In “Talkin’ World War III Blues”, Bob Dylan sang:
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams.
But what about a people that don’t go to school? How would this universal dream play out for them?
Think of Ook, a caveman who lived 23,000 years ago. One night he dreams that he is the main tracker on a big mammoth hunt. The rest of the band has followed him for weeks on the trail of a mammoth. But he suddenly realizes to his horror that he had totally neglected to actually find any mammoth tracks all along. Now what is he going to do? His wife, Igga, shakes him awake. “Ook cry out in sleep. What wrong?” “Uhh… only bad dream. Ook glad wake up!”
I’m a few years out of college, and I hardly ever have/remember dreams, but when I do it’s always one of these:
-
Haven’t Been To Class
It’s almost always High School, specifically 10th grade history. Somehow I just forgot to go. But I never have to take a test or anything, probably because I’ve always been able to nail tests no problem. For me, the worst part is, like Mean Guy mentioned, the plain old embarrassment. I mean, what kind of dumbass forgets to go to class for a whole year? And I’m always really disappointed in my classmate-friends (it was a small school, so you’d have the same people in all your standard classes); why didn’t they remind me to go? -
Can’t Hardly Move For Some Reason
I’m being chased or I just want to get somewhere fairly quickly, but my legs just won’t go. It’s like I can feel them ignoring the nerve impulses my brain is sending down. Or all I can do is lay and down and sleep. And let me tell you, I feel pretty silly falling asleep when I’m dreaming. -
Externally Influenced Craziness
If the alarm radio clicks on, but not loud enough to wake me up, the morning DJ’s antics get turned into my dream. My brain will try to take whatever I’m hearing and make dream sense out of it. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know it except that they play the same sound bite or news story later on when I’m awake and I remember it from my crazy dream. Maybe that’s where your dreams are coming from, RedDawgEsq?
General Questions is for questions with factual answers, IMHO is for opinions and polls. I don’t see a factual answer here.
Off to IMHO.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
I taught for several years, so my variation on this is that I forgot to teach a class for an entire semester – that fourth section of Intro? Oops.
I have it constantly, but with a twist. Mine always starts with the beginning of semester and I watch myself slack off with horror. Even when I do try to make it to class, fate conspires to keep me away.
I chalk this up to the fact that I dropped out of college the first time around, due to a lack of self-discipline.
I thought I was the only one! I have a dream that I sign up for a few classes, and then at the end of the semester, I realize I was signed up for one class and after the first day, I forgot to go! And then I start panicking!
Wow! I’ve had just about all these (except the appendage one) along with the following:
-
It’s the last day of school, I have to get everything out of my dorm room and into a small car. Nothing is packed, I have closets and book shelves full of junk and the task is impossible. (BTW, I haven’t lived in a dorm in over 30 years).
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The All Night Marathon Tech Support Question Dream. It’s one hysterical angry caller. I never can fix the problem and always wake up with a headache.
I have a dream where I have to either punch in a phone number, or type some sort of code in, in a short period of time, and I keep messing up and having to start over.
Damn! You’ve been inside my head! I did about 21 plays and musicals years ago (Equity waiver, non-equity dinner theater and community theater), and I was always prepared, knew my lines and had no trouble in performance. But many times I have dreamed that I was backstage someplace, unaware of what theater I was in or even what play was to go on, and someone would be saying, “Places!” I would panic because somehow I was expected to perform and didn’t know a single line. Worse, sometimes this would combine with the “naked in public” dream. (Thankfully, I always had my penis, though.)
I’ve had many of the other dreams described as well. I would find myself in a classroom having no idea how I got there and not recognizing anything or anyone. But the class would be listed in a schedule in my notebook.
Yes.
I still have that recurring, “forgot I had a 10:00 Tuesday-Thursday class” dream. I haven’t been in school sinced 1986, when I graduated. Sometimes the dream is that I have to finish one semester to complete my degree, but then I forget about that class again, it’s the middle of the term when I figure it out, and panic ensues.
Just checking in.
I had a dream where I missed an exam, and then woke up to find I had missed an exam (the dream was just that exciting). Luckily, in both dream and reality, I managed to convince the prof to let me take it the next day (it was only a midterm). I’ve had the standard lost class dream, but only once, as I recall. I’m still in school, so I dread leaving, as it apparently becomes more common.
My most common dream is of running: either I can run really fast or my strides are huge. I lived this out one time by dropping acid and running down a mountain. I guess I’m lucky to be alive.
I also have a recurring dream where I get chased around well-lit hallways by a biting midget. :dubious: