I just had a variant on this dream last night...

[mousme]

I was patting myself on the back for not having had this dream in a really long time. Turns out I'm not immune, even fifteen years after leaving high school and ten years after leaving university (okay, not quite ten... nine? Ish?)



ladytairngire said in fearsclave's LJ that she believes school dreams to be iconic in the same way that flying and falling dreams are, and that makes a lot of sense to me. I know that I tend to have this school-based dream whenever I'm in the midst of making life changes (see previous post).

I personally find that whenever I dream of being in school or taking a test it reflects my progress in some life lesson. For example, if I dream of my grade school I'm at the beginning of a lesson, middle school = in the midst, high school or college = almost at the end. Confronted with a test you aren't prepared for? Finding yourself in the wrong classroom? These things can easily be metaphors for life events.

So, yes. Pretty much what she said. :)

Comments

[swestrup]

I had a school dream the other night too, but this one was more along the lines of having to go back to get a transcript or something stupid and they'd renovated the building so that nothing was where it used to be, and there were now a few extra wings, etc.

Strangely enough, you and another friend (tepintzin) had somehow merged and were now in charge of the brand-new engineering department there...

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Huh. Weird. I've never had any particular inclination toward engineering. ;)

[swestrup]

So far as I know, neither has teppy!

[dizietsma.livejournal.com]

My university dream has nothing to do with the classes I did, it's about a shitty situation I got into there, but with current people in my life mixed in. Not fun.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh, blick.

My dreams usually revolve around high school. Very very rarely, they are about elementary school. Otherwise, I don't recall ever dreaming about university.

[swestrup]

I used to have University dreams exactly like that XKCD one, until I had this dream. Since then, none.

[pasley.livejournal.com]

You think that's bad? It's been over twenty years, now, since Cegep, ten years since university graduate studies, and I (still) get student anxiety dreams . . . and also teacher anxiety dreams!

Sometimes the dream will begin with me as a student again (either Cegep or university), trying to find a classroom for a course that I've missed most of and need to pass or else I'll flunk out, somehow. And then, halfway through the dream, I'll suddenly think "Wait a minute! Aren't I supposed to be a teacher?!" And then the dream will shift into a nightmare about teaching, where I'm still trying to find a classroom, but now it's because I'm supposed to be teaching a course that started ten minutes ago . . . and that I've never taught before . . . and sometimes I find it, and the room is tiny or oddly-shaped, or the desks are too small for students to sit in . . . and I have no lesson plan, no clue what I'm supposed to be teaching them . . .

My heart is racing just describing these dreams. Fortunately, I only tend to get them near the end of xmas and summer holidays. Occasionally in these dreams I actually solve the problems that I'm faced with, come up with a lesson plan on the fly . . . or, simply, walk away from the entire situation, because, I decide, it's just not that important anyway. When that happens, I wake up feeling very empowered. But mostly I spend the dreams in a panicky, floundering muddle, and wake up from them feeling tense and depressed. Yuck!

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Ack!

Another reason I am happy not to be a teacher these days, which was my original plan. I think I'd be having teaching-anxiety dreams all the time!