I’m also surprised at how common this dream is. I’m generally not too stressed about tests, so my variant is usually that I step into class the last week of school and I realize I haven’t done any of the required projects all year. OR, I’m on stage to give a recital and I realize I never practiced the instrument. Hate those dreams!
Those dreams plus the ones where my teeth or hair are falling out are really the only recurring-type dreams I have. Perhaps that’s the reason I’m an insomniac. Also, incidentally, I’ve NEVER had the prototypical naked dream. Pick your poison, I guess.
Side note–is this where they got the name for the Sopranos episode “The Test Dream”? That is, is “test dream” a well known name for that kind of dream? Not that the Test Dream episode involved an exam or test that I remember, but I thought the similarity was interesting. I interpreted it as a take on the idea of a test drive when I first learned the name.
I’m 40 years old. I still have the “test” dream a few times a year. Usually, the test will be on a very difficult subject (e.g. advanced math). The room is always a cold, sterile environment (plain walls and carpet, bright fluorescent lights, sometimes with windows, sometimes without). I feel like I am the only one amongst the students who is completely unprepared and doomed to fail miserably.
In other similar dreams I am at my locker and I am unable to remember my combination. Every time I have this dream it’s with a Master lock with a light blue dial face as I had really used such a lock. I still have the lock, but it’s fastened and sitting in a box. I don’t remember what the combination is (I also know that these kinds of locks are relatively easy to pick).
I’m 62 and have had the “forgot I was in the course and now have to take the final” variation once or twice in the last few years. I was a letter carrier for seven years in my twenties, and the test dream was pushed out of my repetoire for the next few decades by my two post office dreams: A) I’m having lunch at my normal spot and reading a book while I eat. When I look at my watch it’s 5 o’clock and I still have half my route to deliver and should have been done by 3. B) I’m working as a sub or new hire at an unfamiliar office. I can’t find my case, or parcel tub, or if I have been able to put my mail in order I look around and notice that every other carrier left for their routes hours earlier.
Getting any of these dreams is rare nowadays, but if I do, it’s more likely to be school-related rather than post office related.
Happily, even after 30 years of being a tech writer/pubs manager and ridiculous deadlines, I have never had the high-tech version of this type of dream.
I’m 43, and I still have it. And it’s always one specific test - the last final between me and my college degree. It was in European history 1815 - present. The prof. said he’d give 7 essay questions, and you could pick any 3 to answer. Given that I’d spent a lot of the semester goofing off, I decided to concentrate all my studying on the 1800’s, certain there would be at least 3 questions on that time period. My subconscious apparently disagreed though, since I to this day have nightmares where I walk in and every question is about WWI and later.
53 here, and I’ve been having them a lot lately. Must be stress related, because of unemployment. They stopped 15 years ago, but sometimes can come back, I guess. Weird.
Oh, I have the teeth falling out one too. And I don’t usually have the naked dream, I have other anxiety dreams about being inappropriately dressed - like I’m wearing a bathing suit but have to go to a ball, or I wore a top but forgot my pants and have to hide behind a table.
I used to have the dream about waking up without clothes on at school and it was pretty terrifying. After it happened to me in real life, that dream stopped for good after that.
I have both the naked in public dream and test dreams.
For test dreams, I have encountered almost all the variants - sitting for a paper which subject I am weak at, or dreaming that I was preparing for a paper or rushing a project which is due tomorrow. Towards the end of the dream I would be going “WTF I have graduated!”
I also get dreams where I am partially undressed in public. I haven’t got dreams where I was taking tests while partially undressed yet though.
Some of the stranger dreams are those when I went back to high schools, sometimes as a ‘travel back in time’ kind of experience.
The worst dreams I had was re-living times when I was being shouted at by the teacher and I don’t have a clue as to how to respond. Wish I could do some lucid dreaming and beat the shit out of them then.
I taught high school for 26 years. I’ve had recurring dreams about doing something I ought not do in class and having the principal catch me. These things are usually just chewing out a kid or maybe cussing a kid out.
I have also had the dream where I forgot to go to class all quarter and now the report card is coming in the mail.
A troublesome recurrent dream is one in which I’m smoking a cigarette. I quit smoking back in March and the dreams are the only trouble I have with it any more.
I’m 50 and still have the test dream sometimes. Also finding myself onstage with a band I’ve never rehearsed with, I’m only vaguely familiar with their music, and there’s a spotlight on me.
More often, I’ll dream I’ve moved a long distance, and realize I’m still supposed to be working at my old job. Which conflicts with my new job. And I can’t afford to lose either.
That’s my version. I signed up for a class, forgot about it entirely all semester, and somehow found out about the final exam. Which I must pass, or else (else, what? I don’t know. But there’s always an else) . And I also usually have trouble finding the testing room (I’ve gotten lost in Escher paintings on the way), so I’m late, too.
If I do get there, it’s not something that I can fake my way through, it’s always something like “Geometry of Manifolds.”
From time to time I’ve dreamed I was either back in my first (and only) year at uni, or in the sixth form at school as an implausibly mature student. But since having the exam from hell last month (Open University) I’ve twice had a refinement: sat staring at a couple of pages of math questions and no idea how to get started on them. The actual exam was nearly as bad…
Also the stage-show dream. Sometimes I’m frantically looking through the script trying to cram my lines. It never works.