I haven’t had one in a long time, but I would get Nightmares about forgetting to take a grad class, not finding out until the last day, and not being able to get my diploma because of it.
So similar to the stories in the article
Why adults still dream about school
141–150 of 340 posts
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#142This is odd. I grew up and went to school in the Netherlands, and while I’m often still annoyed with the arbitrary scoring of academic affairs, it’s never been a source of anxiety. All the dreams I have about high school and university (and it’s not so many) involve having fun with the friends I made there. I kind of have to wonder what other people go through.
It's just the nature of being anything lower middle class, or above in the US. Preschool is required to get a leg up on elementary school, which is required to get into a good middle school, required to get into a good high school, and finally, required to get into a good university.
If at any point in that chain you fail, you've been led to believe your life will be a failure, there are no social programs to save you. You will work minimum wage for life.
And if you do succeed and get a degree, your reward is $100k in student debt. Which you will have to pay down over the course of 20 years working corpo jobs and barely scraping by, since you need to enrich landlords in the process.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#143There isn't a week when I don't have a day where I feel like a total monster at 7:15am trying like crazy to motivate my frustrated and anxious teenager off to high school and asking her about her homework and the like... And then promptly waltz upstairs with my coffee, sit in front my computer, read the news and (mostly) happily write program on computers all day, while playing with my border collies and walking thro…
Naive question here: I've wondered about this. Non-parent here (so far), so I'm about to arrogantly over-simplify a lot of things... The science around teenagers needing more sleep, and doing better in life/school/everything if they start their day later, seems well-established at this point. Additionally, there's plenty of known-better ways to learn beyond the rote-memorization-and-standardized-test system that's st…
The high performing kids need less help.
As to the why things are the way they are, people don't wanna do better because it's inconvenient.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#144I turned 50 this year, and I'm finally done with college for good. I will never earn a degree.
I tried at least 5 times to finish college. I honestly gave it "the old college try" over, and over, and over again. I really wanted to please my father with that piece of paper in my hand. But that path just wasn't for me.
Elementary school and high school were marvelous, formative experiences for me. The schools were truly safe, secure environments where the Catholic faculty and staff respected me and upheld my human dignity, no matter what. I was never hurt or mistreated by the Irish sisters, nor by the priests and religious, or lay teachers. Now contrast that with my home life where I was subjected to endless shame, emotional trauma, and humiliation. I basically wanted to escape to school and stay there forever.
Unfortunately this came apart at the seams in college, because guess what? My parents had always been the ones pushing and cajoling me through homework and projects and tests and perfect attendance. Without my dual-helicopter parents doing all the work for me, I was doomed to failure, over and over in college. So I dropped out again and again. It wasn't for lack of trying.
Years ago, I did have "school flashback" dreams. I was naked in class. I forgot to study for a final exam. I was being teased or bullied by classmates. Yeah, it was all on replay for years, but I worked past that.
I took a final swing at earning a degree and I got halfway to an Associate's. But truthfully, I did finish what I started, because I earned three professional certifications and landed a fantastic steady job. So in the end, my college days weren't wasted, despite all the credits I'll leave on the table.
I'm grateful for the faculty, staff, and admins who always treated me with utmost respect, kindness, and reminded me of my innate human dignity, and through them I was able to discern a vocation as an educator in my own right.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#145This is quite real. I did EECS at Berkeley Engineering and I still have nightmares about not finishing something and this is close to 20 years later. I’m going to a BBQ next week with some of my classmates and I’m going going to ask them. A buddy went to West Point and he had similar nightmares. My guess is that it’s more prevalent in the very demanding and competitive STEM majors and probably architecture. I remembe…
Is EECS at Berkeley significantly harder than other majors?
gpa in nationally ranked engineering schools is usually quite a bit lower than other departments, and a 4.0 is often unheard of. Varies with school.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#146It really says something about western education that these PTSD like dreams are so widespread.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#147It really says something about western education that these PTSD like dreams are so widespread.
I think there is an important difference between having stress and having a traumatic stress disorder.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#148No post body was provided.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#149Funnily enough, I have the inverse of this dream. Exam-taking was never very stressful for me, so I never had the classic dream. But when I was a graduate student and started teaching my own classes, things changed. I, an inveterate procrastinator, started dreaming that that I'd shown up to the final without writing it. This, to me, is much more humiliating that blanking on a test. And I still have those dreams today, as well as a few variations (e.g., it's final grades time and I haven't graded any of the homework, or I've been supposed to teach a class but haven't remembered to show up for weeks).
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#150I have the college dreams fairly regularly. Usually they are about forgetting to attend class for a whole semester. But my other recurring dream is about being an LDS missionary again. I think that experience in real life was even more stressful than college—definitely more guilt-inducing. In the dream I'm my current self—mid-40s, married, kids, career, atheist—and yet somehow the church has managed to coerce me back…
What were the stakes? What did failure look like? Did you get punished if you didn't indoctrinate enough people?