You know that dream where you’re back in college and it’s the end of the term is almost over and you suddenly realize that there’s this class you haven’t been to all semester? (Or, alternately, that you showed up in class one days and there’s a test that you haven’t studied for?)
I HATE that dream!
And I still get it–years after college.
So do my friends.
This leads me to wonder: What is it about college that produces this dream? Sure, college is an intense experience at a crucial, transitional time of life. But why do people have this dream so many years after college is over?
(BTW, sorry for spoiling future nightmares for any college-folk who are reading this but . . . this is what you have to look forward to–sometimes, anyway).
Human psychology is fundamentally the same in every age, though culture and circumstance do have their impacts. This leads me to think that people in other ages–before it was standard to go to college–likely had an equivalent dream. But what was it?
Perhaps in tribal societies, people who had long been made men had nightmares about being unprepared for the rites of manhood or something (and some of those could indeed be disturbing–like adult circumcision). Perhaps in societies where there are arranged marriages, people have anxiety dreams long after the fact about meeting their predestined spouse for the first time.
But such a predictable equivalent doesn’t appear in all cultures.
So that leaves me with a question.
No answers, just a question.
Collective brainpower, anyone?
As an immigrant, my big “crucial, transitional time of life” was bringing my family to another country and starting over (literally). My nightmare dream is where I get deported back on a false charge – even though I have been a citizen now for many years, my children are born here, have no criminal convictions, no lies on my original application etc. (in other words no real reason to worry)
But to answer Jimmy’s question on collective experience in this… I *have* asked other immigrants and almost every one of the men or head of households have had the same dream – it really is weird. (If I do get deported it will be because I am a “red stater” – pro life, pro male and female marriage etc.. – I predict that the next left wing government will use the same anti terror and telephone bugging laws to go after Christians)
I had and continue to have the same dream as Jimmy….
The only difference is that I did actually forget to go to a class for half a semester.
Still managed a B though 🙂
I have that same college dream too, but I thought it was just me! I dream that I signed up for a class, but then completely forgot about it until the end of the semester. Now it is too late to drop the class, the final exam is right around the corner, and I am extremely stressed out because I don’t know what to do.
For the record, I graduated from college in 1996, and this scenario never did actually happen to me in real life. However there was one class that I skipped often, and I didn’t know that we had a major paper assigned until about a week before it was due. I have always suspected that that experience was the cause of this recurring dream.
Wow, you mean other people have that same dream, too? I’ve had that exact dream several times. That’s freaky.
I’m a college graduate, but I’ve never had that dream or nightmare — not that I remember anyway. I’ve had similar weird, uncomfortable/frustrating dreams about other facets of life, though. Actually I don’t usually remember my dreams. Maybe I just don’t give enough thought to their significance or their origin, so quickly forget them. It’s probably a good thing God doesn’t send me important dreams and visions, because if He did, I and the world would be in real trouble, so rarely do I remember what I’ve dreamt.
What about the flying dream? Does anyone else ever have that? I have this dream very often (probably about once a week — much more often than the college dream). In the dream, I am able to fly, although technically it’s more like a combination of near-weightlessness and swimming through the air. And it is very realistic — so much so that it still seems real even after I have been awake for quite some time. I wonder if anyone else has this dream, or if I’m just weird?
Also, for the falling dream: Everyone says that when they dream that they are falling, they always wake up before they hit bottom. But I don’t. When I dream that I’m falling (which is not too often, and has nothing to do with the flying dream mentioned above), I always dream that I hit the ground, and I usually wake up at that point.
I can go one better on the “college” dream: my one semester of teaching college has apparently scarred me deeply. In my College Nightmare I was supposet to TEACH the class I forgot to go to all semester. And I don’t know the subject matter either. And I can’t find the classroom.
Sheesh!
I’ve had the college dream several times! My friends and family have often talked about that kind of dream. Variations on that are showing up to class without clothes on, forgetting your locker combination, not being able to find your classroom (looking and looking until after the class has ended and then trying to find the class after that one, etc.)
As for flying in dreams…I’ve had that a few times. I’ve also had the awesome experience a few times of realizing that I’m dreaming and taking the oppurtunity to explore the dream world and have fun with it for a while. This usually happens when I’m near waking so I don’t have much time to explore before waking up.
When I was young I was able to cause myself to repeat a dream that I had had before.
Dreams are cool.
Dreams where you know you’re dreaming and can exert some control over the dreaming world are way cool. They’re called lucid dreams, and they most often happen, I think, shortly before waking. I can often fly in such dreams, and as I soar over cityscapes and forests and such I’m constantly amazed at the wealth of detail and complications that my subconscious generates on the fly.
Like most college alumni, I’ve had the college dream many times too (tho actually for me very often it’s set in high school, and even though I’m grown up and everything it turns out that there’s there’s this one requirement that I never satisfied and I have to go back and make it up).
I think it’s generally accepted that this dream is a response to stress, although I’ve also had stress dreams that involve [a] attempting to pilot a giant locomotive-sized vehicle down city streets and [b] building incredibly huge and complicated towers of furniture or other materials and being on top trying to keep the tower from collapsing.
Could the high school / college class / test dream have anything to do with the formative time in life that one is usually at at that point? Presumably the parallel immigrant dream would argue against that possibility.
tho actually for me very often it’s set in high school, and even though I’m grown up and everything it turns out that there’s there’s this one requirement that I never satisfied and I have to go back and make it up
Wow, this is super spooky. I had this exact same dream many times shortly after graduating from universiy, about having to go back to high school to finish something. It literally made me sick to my stomach upon waking.
I also had a recurring dream for a while about having a super-important final examination, showing up and just sitting there and staring off into space for almost three hours while everyone else was writing. Then, when the proctor announced that there was 10 minutes left, I would realize I was supposed to be writing my exam, and then I would panic and feverishly try to do the exam in the 10 minutes remaining. Very unpleasant dream.
🙁
Math! It’s always some fecking math class! Ten sparging years later and the dreams are still there! I had SIX BLEARY semesters of math and I’m still not free of it! Look! There! On the wall! See it?!? That MY DIPLOMA! I’m done, you hear! Done! Take your hands off me!! No, I don’t want to go back in the box!!! Help!! SOMEONE, Help!!!
I hate that dream! But also, I’m gearing up to start teaching my first college class for this coming spring semester. I hope I don’t follow in Diana’s footsteps to find that I can have nightmares both about missing classes I’m attending and that I’m teaching. Ugh!
And, was there a question we were supposed to help Jimmy to answer? I don’t think I understood it.
I wouldn’t worry too much about having teaching anxiety dreams. It’s understandable that some folks might get them depending on how stressful they find teaching, but others don’t. I taught philosophy for two years and don’t have teaching nightmares.
As to the questions, I guess they were (1) What do they have as an equivalent to the missed-class/forgotten-test nightmare in cultures that don’t have college (or high school, I suppose) and (2) what it is about college that makes us have such nightmares (I think I have the answer on this one, at least in general terms).
Even if those questions are never answered, I’m happy to see how much people are commenting on this thread. Apparently it touched on something interesting and created an occasion for people to connect on this subject.
I’ll trade your dream Jimmy for my drowning dreams. I have lost count of how many dreams I have had in regards to my drowning. =/
Here is my scenario. I don’t know what leads me to be under a deep body of water but all I know is that I am there and I can see what I think is the top of the water. So I start to swim. I am paddeling and paddeling, holding my breath for as long as I can till I reach the surface.
I can see the sun shining off the water and it seems that close but no matter how long I swim for I can’t reach the top. I start to panic and I feel myself starting to swallow water because I am getting too tired.
Finally after severe anxiety I feel myself starting to drown and I begin to lose consciousness. I know I am drowning and there is nothing I can do about it. My body starts to relax and I know the end is any second now. My eyes start to close as if I am sleepy yet I am still gasping for air.
And then that’s it. I’m dead. I can’t feel my body and it’s pitch black for me.
This is about when I usually wake up.
By the way, yes I can swim. A fairly decent swimmer at that too.
If you think that’s something you should know about the dreams where I have died in an automobile accident. Another thing, I am a good driver too. ehehehe
I in no way have a preoccupation with dying. Never occurs to me in my thoughts through out the day. I pretty much never wonder how it will happen till these dreams show up.
Interesting, I too have had that same dream, and the back-to-highschool one as well. I think that these dreams hit young people, 24-35 or so, who are still trying to figure out life, and are feeling like they must have really really missed something that everyone else seems to have gotten a long time ago. I’d be interested to figure out what age and under what circumstances these dreams hit people.
Both hubbub and I have had the 1) highschool requirement that has to be made up years later’ (although we are both college grads in our 30s now) dream and 2) the ‘forgotten college class towards the end of the semester’ dream and the 3) ‘no pants in class’ dream. So frequently have I had the latter, that once in a dream I found myself in a classroom and looked down and was pleasantly surprised to find I *was* wearing my pants. It was quite a relief. There is a doctoral thesis for someone buried in this discussion, no doubt.
I’ve actually never had that dream while asleep, but am currently experiencing something like it in real time. 🙂 College finals are really the best, aren’t they?
I have this dream all the time (Spanish Class).
Wow, I have had the forgot-to-go-to-class dream many, many times too. Most recently and vividly it was Linear Algebra.
I am a registered nurse, and I have had similar anxiety dreams that were set at work: it’s the end of the shift and I’m getting ready to give report to the nurses coming on duty, when I look at the assignment board and realized that someone had added a patient to my assignment and never told me.
In a particularly vivid go-around, I run into the patient’s room to see her. She’s sitting up in bed and sweetly says, “Oh, honey, it’s okay, I’m perfectly fine.”
It wasn’t until I woke up that I recognized her. She was a patient from “real life” — who had died a few weeks previously.
I have had many flying dreams. yes, they are like swimming through the air for me too. I also get the college dream. its usually about me going back to college after a long absence and trying to adjust to the different lifestyle after 2 decades away from it. Theres also the bits about either forgetting about a class or not doing the work for it.
But what about travel dreams? For example when you and some companions are on a journey somewhere. I used to have them while in college. they stopped when I graduated. The last journey dream ended with me “arriving” at my destination. which was a huge and brightly lit city. But lately the college dreams have started again and so have the journey dreams.
Replying for the sake of adding to the numbers. I too have had that College dream and am glad to hear others have too — even almost 20 years out.
As for flying, yup that too. But I “push” away from earth with a bat in my hands and then when in the air – swim. Hmm. Thanks all for sharing, that was interesting.
i have NEVER heard of anyone having this dream, ever, ever, ever,…and i have had that dream in college, in law school, and in canon law school. i am stunned at this, jimmy.
I was also suprised by this thread.
I used to have the college dream regularly. I thought it was because I had a bad semester where I skipped many classes. I am now 34 and have not had this dream in a while(maybe more than a year). So maybe there is something to the 25-34 thing.
As for the flying dream, I sometimes have a dream I am flying, but it is not pleasant, it is terrifying because I am going at an incredible rate of speed. I am completely out of control and fear I am going to die. One time I was in a roller coaster car that shot off the track. I was flying in this car at about a zillion miles an hour and could not control it. I don’t like those dreams 🙁
I know it’s just a dream, but that dream is just so real that to this day I’m not entirely sure, even in my conscious moments, that someday the truth is going to come out that I really did miss that class all semester and that my diploma was an administrative mistake. Part of me is convinced the dream is true.
I am 35 years old and had the dream (again) last night. I am rushing to an exam for which I am ill-prepared and realize that I have missed most of the semester of another class and that it must also be time for that final. I had 2 classes during my college career that I eventually blew-off and gave up on after having missed many of them (a miraculous C- in Geology and expected F in Modern Literature).
Like kath, for me the dream is so real, that when I am awake I suspect that my diploma (and perhaps my whole waking life!) is a sham.
I hate this dream and the gut-rot it inspires. To make matters worse, due to some bookkeeping error, the corporation I work for lists my education as “Course Work – No Degree”, which I tried to have corrected once without success.
Tomorrow I am going to get HR to fix this once and for all in hope of getting my head corrected so I can move on to dreaming about things like flying and drowning. Wish me luck.
Brian
jjj
i have to dispute the “25-35″ age group as discussed. my husband and i are a tad older than that (but not by much! LOL) and we both have similiar dreams about missing a class the entire semester and then realizing we remembered that we had signed up for the class but it’s too late to study! (we both have graduate degrees!)
i most recently had this dream last week and i wake up in a panic thinking ‘how could i have forgotten something so important!?”
for me the forgotten course is ALWAYS something that i couldn’t ‘b.s.” on an essay ! it’s always a math course or science class. the one for this past week, was the dream where i signed up for 18 hours for college credit and the only class i didn’t attend was a course on science and plants!!!! what???! and i hate gardening!!! and i am reminded of the exam by a group of friends! i get angry (in my dream) to these so called friends that didn’t tell me i was missing class, they are just kind enough to tell me that the exam is that day!!!! i hate it! i hate it! i hate it! i graduated from grad. school 10 years ago and college 16 years ago and i can’t seem to shake this dream!!!
i knew that others had this dream, but doesn’t do much for getting rid of it!
Interesting enough, I read of Iranian women who dreamed, not they appeared outside naked, but that they appeared without their veils. And this, among women who had not worn the veil when they were younger.
I’m 21, in college, and I have been having anxiety dreams since I started high school. (They go something along the lines of: oversleeping, going to school with a missing article of clothing (wet hair and no make-up), not having my schedule to know what class I have, not knowing where the registrar’s office is to get my schedule, getting in trouble for being out of class (high school) when I finally find the registrar’s office, finding myself in a huge building where I don’t know where the rooms are, not being able to read the map, finally finding the class and don’t know what in God’s name their talking about…) I believe it is a way that your mind deals with stress, it gives you stressful dreams- ironic. Most of my family members have anxiety dreams. My father is 56 and still has dreams of when he worked at UPS 22 years ago. In his dreams he can’t figure out where any of his packages go to. My grandma continued to have stressful dreams about high school up into her 70s. Looks like I something to look forward to. =)
I have had that dream a few times in the past as well, but not for awhile. Perhaps it is a dream that those with many deadlines or important deadlines have. Or perhaps you actually did forget something that should’ve been important, but wasn’t at the time — like remembering a loved one’s birthday or something. Could it in effect be the voice of a subconscious conscience.