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Why adults still dream about school
311–320 of 340 posts
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#312I'm reminded of that amazing scene from Top Secret! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDFJVUaXUI
Bizarrely, I remember there was more to this dream sequence. After he runs through the hallway towards the camera, shot switches to Rivers running in dark mist saying "I need to find the exam!" The mist evaporates revealing students in stadium seating in an auditorium, and Nick asks if this was the physics exam, and the response is "where have you been all semester?" and someone else asks, "where are your clothes?" before the mist returns to white out, and then Nick wakes up relieved he's only being tortured by Nazis.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#313https://archive.ph/a5PXU
Much appreciated.
As for the OP site, it is not even possible to scroll down... it's stuck in the top. Shitty JS.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#314I'm reminded of that amazing scene from Top Secret! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDFJVUaXUI
And this amazing scene from Futurama :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoxjh0Ckfs
Not sure if it's true, but I like to think "Lightspeed Briefs" is a joke based on Fruit of the Loom (at least for a while, stylized as "FTL" in their branding).
FTL is also used as an abbreviation for "faster than light" in sci/scifi discussions of exotic methods of fast travel.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#315There 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…
> School sucked for me, and I kinda... turned out despite it... but I somehow have to get my kids through it. Why?
We live in a society. I don't get to define the world my children live in. They will have to work and survive in the same world you and I do, with all its broken processes and expectations. It's complicated and full of contradictions.
When she was at home during COVID, her mental health suffered greatly, and remote learning simply did not work for her. Daily structure is important, and so is social interaction. And we cannot provide that for her at home.
My (teen) daughter I referred to is in a specialist arts high school program on a media&visual arts track. It's unique for our whole province, and required an audition (portfolio in her case) to get into. But she does have to maintain a reasonable report card in other subjects to stay in that program or risk getting dumped out into the local 'regular' high school. By and large she's motivated by that, but it is anxiety inducing.
The 7:15am departure time reflects this situation. She has to take a (school board provided) cab all the way across the city for 8:40am bell time. It's a garbage start time for teens, but I don't make the decisions.
She is a very bright and talented artist. Her post-high school situation will be a financial struggle, I'm sure, but likely also quite rewarding and creative. Just need to get there.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey! I’m an incoming UW CS student and I would love to hear what you mean by that! I’ve already taken my calc physics and CS at community college so after reading your comment it sounds like I’m in for the worst of it. Thank god CS is direct to major now (I think it started in 2019?) so there isn’t that second year thing now. If you have any tips I’d love to hear em!
If you're already in the CS program then you've got a great head start. Even 20 years ago they had a way to be admitted out of high school, and for the folks who were eligible (I wasn't) and took advantage of that it was great for them. I can give some tips I wish I had known when I started. No guarantees any of this stuff still applies since it's 20 year old info, but I suspect some of it may still be good ... - Aim…
>- Do NOT try to take too much in one quarter. Try to do no more than 2 hard and 1 medium or 2 hard and 2 easy courses. Nobody will stop you if you take 5 hard 3 credit math or CS classes (assuming you have the prereqs) because it's only 15 credits, but by my thinking that's 75 hours a week of work. It's unsustainable and sounds insane but you will almost surely meet or hear about people who try it. Don't be one of them.
>- Pick a couple CS courses a year that you're going to go hard on. Set aside extra time for them, maybe double, do your very best work, and go above and beyond on assignments. Profs will remember their best student in a course and this can open doors for you.
These things go together, and it's unfortunate that, no matter how much faculty advise students not to take on enormous course loads, so many of them insist on trying anyway. It's not just a matter of sustainability: you often won't learn as much as you would be able to learn by taking a few classes and being passionate about them. You simply won't have time. Good university courses are not situations where there is a fixed checklist of things to learn, or ceiling of perfection that you can spend a fixed amount of time reaching and then gain no more. As an undergraduate, the faculty at the physics department I was in would even give relatively easy research and independent study units to those of us they trusted would use the decreased number of courses (but same number of units) per term to think more about physics.
And yes, being known to the faculty as a promising undergraduate is useful. Their doors will be open for scholarly discussions and academic advice at a far more informal level. They can often give better, more specific advice on courses and plans, and can push administratively to make those plans possible. They can point you to topics and resources beyond your classes, and help you understand them. Departmental requirements that don't make sense for you individually can often be substituted or waived. And if you're interested in graduate school, research experience and strong faculty recommendations are all but required.
Getting this sort of reputation in a department usually involves going above and beyond in courses not by doing what is expected perfectly, but by doing things that aren't expected, and that takes passion and time (and choosing classes and professors where it is possible).
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have pretty much these same dreams, about once a year. My undergraduate was traumatizing. Yet I look back on it fondly 15y later. Kinda messed up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
School is supposedly the best experience in life, and simultaneously the most frequent source of nightmares decades later. What a curious coincidence!
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#318I 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?
No post body was provided.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#319I 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 don’t know about that, I was never particularly stressed at college or school. I’m way, way more effected by stress at work where failure to deliver has massive consequences on the state of my startup or the lives of the people that work there.
Re: Why adults still dream about school
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't think it's a perspective - I believe I was fortunate to have the support system that I had. As a child you are supposed to be protected and cared for. And I hope that I can do the same for my children.
Maybe you mistook my perspective for hubris - but it is what childhood should be - innocent and pure and if it's not, then society is failing.