My grandfather is 85, and he says he still has it.
It is pretty rare that I have one now at (nearly) 49, but I have had it a few times in the last few years. The dream usually goes that I haven’t been at class all semester and I need the class to graduate and today is the final.
What amuses me is that even in my dreams I am so confident (arrogant?) that I think to myself: I’m a damn good software developer, I’ll get a job anyway.
I still have it, I’m 47.
Sometimes I dream that I haven’t gone to class, don’t know where it it and can’t find my locker on the day of the final. Other times I dream I’m at the big year-end ballet recital and I don’t know the dance I’m about to be in, sometimes I don’t have a costume either. And the most realistic dream of being overweight, out of shape. in high school and 47 and expected to run the 2 mile at the track meet.
I’ve never had the test dream. I can’t think that I’ve ever had a dream that clearly signalled academic anxiety. On the other hand, I don’t dream much.
BTW, the “test dream” actually happened to me in Real Life when I was about 15 (I showed up on the wrong day, and discovered I’d entirely missed a state exam I needed to graduate high school). It actually turned out not to be a huge deal. I wonder if that’s why I don’t have the test dream?
I’ve never had it. I’ve had the post-exam dream, where I woke up at 3 am seeing in front of me, clear as daylight, what I should have written in the exam of the previous day.
When I was taking Orgo, 60% of the test was about designing synthetic paths, which amounts to “taking all these pieces you know and putting them together” - there was a videogame at the time (the kind you played in arcades, not at home) where Mario had to climb ladders and walk over foodstuffs in order to assemble hamburgers, and somehow both things came together into a dream where I was the toon in a videogame and I had to climb ladders and walk over organic groups in order to assemble molecules. That’s the closest thing I can remember to a “test anxiety dream”, but it wasn’t so much about fear of the test itself but about my own frustration being able to remember the damn pieces (let me have the reference book and I can design synthetic pathways no problem, but my forte was synthetic mechanisms, which was the other 40% of the exam and the part most people couldn’t figure out to save their lives).
I am 37 and I have this dream all the time. I had it this morning as a matter of fact. It covers all kinds of classes and bizarre scenarios. Going back to high school is a popular theme but the kicker is that I am my current age and I have to pass a final desperately for some reason. I don’t know any of the answers and the teacher tells me that I won’t graduate high school again. I try to explain that I already have a college degree so this isn’t necessary for me and then I realize how dumb this is and wake up. I flunked a driver’s ed written test in my dream just this morning but then I figured out that they couldn’t take my license away because I have been driving for 22 years so I just walked out.
I’m 68 and it never goes away completely. I can’t recall exactly how long it’s been but I have that dream maybe twice a year.
How about the flying dream?
I taught for a few years, more than 20 years ago, and the version I still have is, “I was supposed to be teaching a class this semester, just remembered that I was supposed to be teaching it, and the final is today.” Seriously.
Not sure if I ever had a dream about a test per se, but in the dream I would have, I hadn’t gone to a class for several months, and didn’t even know where it was or what days it was meeting on. That enough was enough to freak me out without actually showing up for a test unprepared (although IIRC it was somewhat close to the end of the course in some situations.)
I think I had one of those dreams a year or so ago (I’m 37). But that was the only one in several years, before that I’d have them yearly.
20 years out of school, and still having this type of dream on occasion.
It’s probably in large part a byproduct of once having missed something like a quarter of one of my college classes, having to scramble to borrow notes in the days leading up to the final, then doing marathon study sessions (including virtually all night the night before the exam) in order to pass the course.
Funny, that explains why I don’t have the naked in school dream.
I’ve never had that dream. I’m sure that, if I had, my reaction would be, “What’s the subject?” and “How much time do I have?”
I was never concerned about taking tests.
Never had the naked in school dream either.
I had the test dream for a few years after I finished all my formal education, but not very much recently. I think I had one in the last six months or so, and I woke up surprised, thinking… wow that’s been a while.
As a nurse however, I am subject to a “forgotten patient” dream. Its the end of my shift and I am giving report and oooops… John Doe was my patient today? Um… uh… panic
Trust me I’d rather have the test dream. Flunking out of school is one thing, patient abandonment charges from the College of Nurses is quite another.
I’ve never had that dream, but I was never very concerned about taking tests.
I don’t have test dreams so much, but I have this violin dream.
Actually, guitar. I’m back in college and trying to find my way to an ensemble class. I have my guitar with me but I forgot my picks. I go back home to get my picks but leave my guitar behind. I go back home to get my guitar and picks but forget my cable. I go back to get my cable and picks but forget my guitar. And all the while I’m wandering an endless maze of hallways and stairs, unable to find the classroom. And fearing that I’ve forgotten how to play.
This is such a universal dream that I wonder if there is an evolutionary advantage to it. What did people dream about before classrooms and tests were invented? Forgot how to kill a wooly mammoth?
I’ve had the nightmare of suddenly realizing that I registered for a course and then forgot about it and it’s now halfway through the semester. This was several years after my last degree.
I’m 30 and I still have it. (Also the “oh crap I’m in this course and I never went to class and oh shit it’s the finals” one.)
Mid-30s, same deal as many: never have the test or naked dreams, but I get the following:
– Forget to show up to a class for weeks, end up there for the first time to realize I can’t possibly pass now;
– Forget my class schedule / have no idea where to go;
– One I haven’t seen here, but still bugs me every now and again: forgot my locker combination and/or can’t make it from my locker to class in time.
What’s fascinating to me-- and obviously to the other posters on this thread-- is how common this dream is. I don’t know if I ever met anyone who DOESN’T experience this dream, or a variation on it. I guess that school-age discipline and anxiety really does a number imprinting itself on our malleable young psyches…
Or maybe what berries were the poisonous ones?
Mine definitely isn’t a wandering dream–it’s more sitting in class dreading that our teacher will ask me to play. But it’s always the same every time. The larger context of the dream might be different. The classroom might be different. But it’s the same feeling that captures just what it was like in school. And even though the homework variation isn’t THAT scary (more like, "Crap, I should have done that)–this one’s pretty scary.
I also have a dream where I’ve moved back into college and keep trying to phone this one friend who never picks up or answers. Which is weird because we used to hang out a lot and we’re still in contact (email and visit quite a lot) and she was never really hard to get a hold of. But those wandering elements of walking around and trying to do something that just never gets done–those are all there.
When I committed to getting BS #2. They stopped cold…
I also had a variation where I was in a class, and I’d say to myself, “Why am I here? I 've already graduated!” I viewed those as foreshadowing my old age return to academia.