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Why adults still dream about school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why adults still dream about school

#251

Post by badpun »

eru wrote: post #126
ryandrake wrote: post #61

I feel like this is because school, especially college, and particularly exams, is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get, so they look back at that time as peak-anxiety. Think about it: you're being evaluated and the result of that evaluation shapes the next step in the pipeline, and ultimately the trajectory of the rest of your life! Well, at least that's what the university officials, professors, you…

Eh, I still dream about school sometimes, and it was as low stakes as it can get for me. I never studied for anything, never did any homework, and to enter university in Germany I just needed good enough grades to pass high school (Gymnasium). GPA was irrelevant. Of course, I don't wake up with any cold sweat over it.

In Poland, if you want to get into any university, High School diploma is all you need. However, if you want to go the best ones, or to a popular subject (psychology, computer science) in a mediocre one, you need good grades.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#252

Post by justsomeguy123 »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #215
actionfromafar wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe you mostly can’t homeschool.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_... Apart from a few countries you can.

Like, apart from the whole Europe.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#253

Post by impulse7 »

vjk800 wrote: post #231
ryandrake wrote: post #61

I feel like this is because school, especially college, and particularly exams, is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get, so they look back at that time as peak-anxiety. Think about it: you're being evaluated and the result of that evaluation shapes the next step in the pipeline, and ultimately the trajectory of the rest of your life! Well, at least that's what the university officials, professors, you…

I never experienced any anxiety from exams or performing well in the elementary school. School was easy for me and also, coming from one of the Nordic welfare countries, I never thought that my life would somehow be ruined if I didn't do well in school. I felt much more anxiety about other kids in school since I was quite nerdy and didn't fit in well. Consequently, I never have dreams about exams. However, I do have…

Same experience here and also from Nordic country. But tons of dreams where I'm in school only to realize I'm not wearing any pants.

Guess it's also compensated by the number of dreams where there are car problems and parking tickets of all kinds.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#254

Post by paganel »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #242

Is this a US only thing? It's certainly not something that has ever bothered me and none of the people I know who attended a university ever mentioned such a thing. So I think this dictum applies: When a title asks "Why" first ask "If".

I'm from Romania, I still get those recurring nightmares related to uni and even to highschool (some of the HS professors were even more demanding than what I got at uni). I attended uni about 20 years ago.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#255

Post by badpun »

jimt1234 wrote: post #196

I cheated my way through high school. I had a scam for every class, every test, every homework assignment. So yeah, I had dreams about school, but mine were more about me feeling guilty. They typically went like this: Some bureaucrat did an audit of all the school work from my high school during the late-80s and somehow identified me as a cheater, so the school revoked my diploma. My college found out, so they revoke…

I cheated a lot, both in high school and in university (it was basically standard in both places, and I went to best HS in town and one of best CS universities in the country). Never had any regrets about it. I'm from Eastern Europe, so don't believe in a just and well-organized world, anyway - over here, we view it more as a jungle, so in you manage to get ahead without directly harming anyone, it's ok.

BTW I stopped cheating in university in later years, as the classes got more interesting and we were no-longer required to do brutal workloads (the university stuffs first two years of CS degree with a lot of math and physics, to weed out people who are not tough enough I guess).

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#257

Post by lambertsimnel »

maxerickson wrote: post #143
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't that depend on what school is for? If the importance of school is overwhelmingly the subject matter or the grades, then I'd agree that high-performing children need less help. To the extent that children need something else from school, high-performing children might need more help than average-performing children. Maybe the average-performing children are more dependent on effective study techniques, while the high-performing children can perform at the expected level with little study. If the subject matter turns out later to be useless, at least the average-performing children have picked up the study techniques they need to learn something useful, but the formerly high-performing children might then face a bigger challenge. Even if school subject matter is useful, that doesn't help those who already know it; they aren't gaining knowledge or productive habits.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#258

Post by kortilla »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #117
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #78

There 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…

>I remember getting to college and being wildly unprepared for everything.

You answered your own question here. Most “high performing” kids will lose interest in one of the foundational branches of math and will decide instead to read fantasy or build a potato cannon.

Without the structure stressing the stuff that is truly important despite it not seeming like it at the time, the vast majority will land in college needing to take remedial high school courses in math and science.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#259

Post by karencarits »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #242

Is this a US only thing? It's certainly not something that has ever bothered me and none of the people I know who attended a university ever mentioned such a thing. So I think this dictum applies: When a title asks "Why" first ask "If".

Even Freud wrote about this type of dream a century ago

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#260

Post by Vedor »

sharadov wrote: post #80
ryandrake wrote: post #61

I feel like this is because school, especially college, and particularly exams, is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get, so they look back at that time as peak-anxiety. Think about it: you're being evaluated and the result of that evaluation shapes the next step in the pipeline, and ultimately the trajectory of the rest of your life! Well, at least that's what the university officials, professors, you…

When am sufficiently stressed at work - a recurring dream I have is that I am in the exam room ready to take a test, but did not study or I have mixed up the dates and came prepared for the wrong subject. But overall school and college was a great experience - the tests and assignments sucked, but what I remember is the great friends that I made, the interesting people that I met and all the personal exploration that…

> so kids bask in your youth! It's fleeting and gone before you know it.

Depends on the perspective, I guess. I was working in several different places, and sometimes I had hard time. Even working in the worst places, I felt better than in school.

I hated elementary school, because kids were cruel (some time I came back to home with chocking marks) and teachers decided to just not see bullying. Or decided to give me a hard time, too. When someone destroyed my textbook by writing on it while I was not at the desk, I got note to the parents because supposedly I told someone to do that.

I kinda liked liceum because finally people were more mature. But man, long term, it was very exhausting. The lesson schedule looked like it was set randomly. For example, in second class, being 16-17 yo, Thursdays I had lessons from 9 AM to 6 PM, and the next day I was starting at 7 AM. I was tired all the time and had no time for social interactions.

Please note that the following paragraph is not personal. It applies to the entire phenomenon. For me, it is annoying when grown-ups tell children that it is the best time in their life. When I was a kid, I felt fear a lot. As a teenager, I was depressed and tired all the time. And, you know, if it is the best time in my life, why should I care about my future at all? It is going to be terrible anyway...

Everyone has its own perspective. Maybe you had great time in school. Maybe for my mother, school years actually are the best years of her life. But telling young people that they are living the best time in their lives, and it will be only worse later, is... unfair.

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