Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/30/nightmares-about-forgotten-exams-youre-not-alone-the-science-behind-academic-anxiety-dreams.html
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I don’t tend to have classroom anxiety dreams now that I’m no longer a student.
However, when I was a teacher, I used to have them all the time. They were exactly the same as the student anxiety dreams, except I was in the role of teacher. These dreams featured exciting remixes of the classics, such as:
- Oh no, I forgot to teach this class all semester and now there’s two weeks until the exam and I have to teach the students everything in that time!
- It’s exam day and I forgot to write the exam! I have two hours to write it, go!
- I’m at the chalkboard teaching the class and I suddenly realize I’m not wearing any pants!
You get the picture.
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Yes indeed! Three most common recurring, and unaccountable, dreams which plague this old pilgrim (haven’t taken a class in more than 25 years):
- sudden recollection having forgot to feed/care for a pet which never had
- lost in some endless edifice, typically some labyrinthine government or industrial complex
- not only haven’t studied for an exam, can’t recall when/where class was even held
So common that sometimes manage to conclude “oh not this stupid thing again”
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I used to have nightmares all the time about realizing half-way through the semester that I was in a college class, and I had missed all my classes so far.
I finally cured this last year!
I went back for another graduate degree for the first time in 20 years. Now I actually have classes, and I haven’t missed one, and the nightmare has gone.
Now I just have to work out how to stay in school forever…
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This happens on the regular to me. I am 35 years out from my last exam, and it is never med school exams that come up in these, it’s some stupid bonehead college gen ed that I forgot I was in and showed up on exam day to try to fake my way through it. Frequently have to talk myself down when I wake up that it was not real, I don’t have these classes anymore, it’s all ok. Usually takes a little while, but I wake in a panic.
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That happened my sophomore year but thankfully they dropped me from the class without charging or other repercussions.
The main dream I have, also from a real event in college, is being completely lost on campus and unable to find the room for my class on the first day.
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I have these academic dreams relatively often – I suspect they’re somewhat related to the dreams I have where I’m back working at a radio station, and I get to work in time to have the station manager hand me a bunch of random newspapers and garage sale ads and tell me I’m going on the air with the news in THREE, TWO, ONE…
As for getting back to sleep after a particularly rough dream, I’ve found that my best strategy is to get up, go in another room, turn on a light, and read something in print 'til I get drowsy again. Reading a book seems to be a good way to get my brain adjusted for sleep…
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I also have the “forgot I was enrolled and it’s exam day, never bought the books or attended a class” dream. It’s freaking me out a bit how common it is.
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I’ve had this dream and a few variations. Like:
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Waking up and realizing it’s the last day of class and I’ve missed every other class of the term.
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Walking into the classroom and realizing that it’s the wrong class/instructor or both and the final for my class was yesterday.
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I’m in the right class, at the right time but I discover that I’ve had the wrong textbook or studied the wrong material over the full term.
These dreams have become increasingly less frequent over time. But I still have one or two every year or so. I’m 72 years old, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen the inside of a college classroom or lecture hall.
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“Bill, you showed up to work late, and you didn’t prepare for the meeting, AND you’re completely naked?!”
“Yep, I’m living the dream.”
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Become a faculty member. It worked for me! 
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Same here!
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Weirdly, the further away from grade school/college/grad school I get, the more class anxiety dreams I seem to be having. Not just the “I know I have a class I haven’t been to, but know nothing about it otherwise.” In recent years I started having dreams about returning to college, but having failed to go to any classes or even move into the dorms. (Then there are the dreams where I have moved into the dorms, but at my current age, not college age, which then immediately becomes awkward.) The most absurd one was that I had somehow failed to accomplish some technical requirement in high school in order to graduate and was now decades late in attending classes. (Somehow I was bothered by a lack of a high school diploma, despite still having my other degrees…)
What’s weird about it isn’t that I’m having anxiety dreams - I’d say that I’m nothing if not a human pressure cooker filled to bursting with anxiety and dread - but the type of anxiety in the dreams never quite seems to match up with the real world anxiety I experience. Obviously it’s more abstract
Oh gods, I started having that one, too.
Dang, all this talk of anxiety dreams is making my anxious.
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I used to have one of trying to find my way out of an old building that had hallways, tunnels and stairways that went on forever. One night, i recognized the setting and though “Here we go again.” But when i came to the house, it was torn down. Just a pile of wreckage. Never had that dream again. I guess whatever my noggin was working through got resolved? 
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I’ve literally had dreams I had to go back to gradeschool as an adult b/c I needed some sort of credit still or my college degree would be invalidated. More often I’m back in college trying find a way to schedule the last two or three classes I need for my degree or to get a master’s degree. Sometimes it’s “I’ve skipped class for 3 months straight and now it’s time for the finals”.
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The pet one… yikes I get that. Some times I have an entire pet store full of animals I have neglected and that one just breaks me.
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I always figured those dreams were just ‘brain on rinse.’ I knew right away when I had a similar one in Jamaica, that it wasn’t mere brain on rinse, that it was genuine, justifiable anxiety.
We’d stayed only a night or two at a few diff places when we got to the island, and were then sposed to spend two nights at a place in Black River (South Coast). The only good things about it were the seemingly nice people who worked there, and the excellent food.
I tried to take a shower at 11 PM, figuring there’d be plenty of hot water then.
It never changed a degree from being ice cold. My teeth literally chattered.
At 8ish PM I’d tried to go down to the kitchen to get some of the snacks we’d brought. There were locked iron gates at both ends of the hallway, so no access to the stairs.
That’s nice and safe in case of fire. WTAF?!
Mom and her honey got a big, bright, clean room with a big tv.
I got a grubby, dirty, dinky room with nothing but unwanted fellow guests. There was a tiny bed with a dirty, smelly blanket, peeling wallpaper, and the ceiling was covered with webs fulla very active spiders. No lamps, just a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling on a black wire. Whoever assigned me that room had obviously decided they loathed me on sight.
I have been a hardcore arachnophobe almost since birth, but that ceiling would’ve made one of anybody. I got maybe 2 hrs’ sleep.
Had an awful dream that night. I dreamed I was back in ugh high school. I was going thru stress over assholes and classes, and everything I owned was in a pair of lockers near the school’s side doors. I immediately recognized it as ‘suitcase anxiety,’ with extra goodies tacked on from the awful hotel room and its innumerable hot and cold running spiders.
When I told mom about all this in the morning, she just smiiiled the whole time and then laughed at me, of course. I got very angry and invited her to my room.
She was horrified when she looked around, but then I pointed to the ceiling, and she actually jumped when she saw the city of spiders. I marched her into the bath and she turned on the ‘hot’ water tap. She let it run for almost a minute, and realized it was not getting warmer. She tried the cold tap, and I chuckled, having tried that myself. Nope. No hot water. Ever helpful, she said, “Well, you could have come to our room to take a shower.” I replied, “How the hell was I supposed to know that hot water was available in other rooms, just not mine?!”
We had a delicious breakfast in the dumpy dining room, and checked out. The girl at the desk was disappointed: we’d orig said we’d stay two or three nights, but there was no way.
Mom didn’t endlessly argue with me, for once. It was the iron gates at the ends of the hallway what did it, though, not what I was put through.
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You got over the thesis defense dreams? 
Now, if only I could get past the nightmares about shopping… 
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