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Why adults still dream about school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why adults still dream about school

#331

Post by newuwstudent »

TheTon wrote: post #240
newuwstudent wrote: post #205

Earlier 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…

Wow thank you so much! I didn’t expect such a detailed response and I really appreciate it! Most of these still seem totally applicable so I’ll put them to good use. I didn’t realize classes were so hard to get in to (Looked it up and it still seems to be an issue) so I’m going to be prepared next quarter.

> For upper level math or CS courses, these are often only 3 credits because there's no section, but you still need to spend at least 15 hours a week on them (so 4 hours of work for every hour of lecture)

This confused me at first. In my orientation session (14 hours long over 2 days…) they never talked about this! At community college basically all classes were 5 credits so it was weird to see many hard classes only be 3 or 4. Sounds like they aren’t going to be any less difficult… Quite annoying!

> 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.

I’ll give this a shot for sure! There are quite a few classes that I’m interested in taking and it’s probably worth putting in a extra effort on the stuff that’s actually important to me.

Thanks again! Your comment gave me a lot of insight about college and UW. Hopefully I won’t have too many nightmares about UW :)

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#332

Post by acconrad »

I got mono 2 months before college graduation. At the time I didn’t think “oh I won’t graduate” but in retrospect being out of school for 2 weeks without doing any work can really make things difficult, especially that close to the end of the semester.

Now I have recurring dreams about having one class that I haven’t studied for at all and there are 6-8 weeks left in the semester. Long enough that I could study at the expense of literally all of my waking time, but short enough that there is real anxiety I might fail this class and not be able to graduate.

At least now I know having these dreams now is evidence of waking anxiety that I have to manage.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#333

Post by garfieldnate »

I sometimes have a dream that I've gone through several months of high school without realizing that there was a class I signed up for but never went to. After finding out the horrible mistake, I'm guaranteed I won't be able to catch up, and my school career is over. Seems like an extremely unlikely scenario in real life, but I've had the dream more than once.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#334

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

CydeWeys wrote: post #136
sharadov wrote: post #80

Earlier 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…

Hell, I have dreams that I've forgotten to attend class all semester long in grad school and the final exam is tomorrow, and I never even went to grad school! It's like my brain subconsciously realized the undergrad panic dreams no longer make sense as that's too long ago, so now they've evolved to something more suitable for later in life, even though I never did that thing.

I legit had a dream recently that I had enrolled in a graduate degree and then forgotten I was enrolled for months and now it was a week before exam time I had just had a realisation of "Oh hey, didn't I enrol in a degree?"

I have no idea where that dream came from or why I had it. I have never had a "didn't study" dream before, university was a relatively stress free time for me compared to my earlier years

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#335

Post by eru »

badpun wrote: post #251
eru wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The situation is similar in Germany, where I grew up. You need good grades to study the popular subjects. For mathematics, they took anyone who was willing.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#336

Post by CydeWeys »

Volundr wrote: post #183
CydeWeys wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I have dreams that I've forgotten to attend class all semester long in grad school and the final exam is tomorrow, and I never even went to grad school! It's like my brain subconsciously realized the undergrad panic dreams no longer make sense as that's too long ago, so now they've evolved to something more suitable for later in life, even though I never did that thing.

This is my dream as well. About 10 years (god has it been that long?) ago I took an informal poll of my small office and was shocked at how many of them had this specific dream. Not just some school anxiety dream. That specific dream where you have a class you either forgot you enrolled in or never attended and have the final coming up. It was like 60% of the office!

God, to make these dreams even worse, I once literally did completely miss an exam in college, as in, I somehow missed the announcement of when it would be, and skipped the study period in the morning when it was given, and then only learned about it later that day in the lecture when everyone was talking about the exam!

Once you actually live that experience, it (or versions of it) will haunt your nightmares for the rest of your life.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#337

Post by CydeWeys »

rzzzt wrote: post #229
mvaliente2001 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine was that I had forgotten to take a class or that the records were lost and I had to redo the last years of college. It was a nightmare I had even a decade after getting my degree.

Same here -- my classmates and I go back to high school for taking one history class, as due to administrative difficulties one requirement for the degree was not met, and noone noticed until now. I went there more than 20 years ago.

Ughhh, I had a dream within the last couple months where I had to go back to high school for a very similar reason, to finish one last class or something. I couldn't tell you why, as things in dreams often don't make sense, other than that I had to. And it was very strange having to be in those hallways with all the school kids as an adult.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#338

Post by Firmwarrior »

mecha_ghidorah wrote: post #334
CydeWeys wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I have dreams that I've forgotten to attend class all semester long in grad school and the final exam is tomorrow, and I never even went to grad school! It's like my brain subconsciously realized the undergrad panic dreams no longer make sense as that's too long ago, so now they've evolved to something more suitable for later in life, even though I never did that thing.

I legit had a dream recently that I had enrolled in a graduate degree and then forgotten I was enrolled for months and now it was a week before exam time I had just had a realisation of "Oh hey, didn't I enrol in a degree?" I have no idea where that dream came from or why I had it. I have never had a "didn't study" dream before, university was a relatively stress free time for me compared to my earlier years

haha, that's what gets me

I guess I'm brimming with enough (over)confidence to avoid the "didn't study" dreams or the "sitting in the back seat of an empty car" dreams, but I occasionally dream I signed up for some class and then didn't bother to attend it, wasting my time and snubbing the teacher.. "ah shoot, sorry guys"

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#339

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #338
mecha_ghidorah wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I legit had a dream recently that I had enrolled in a graduate degree and then forgotten I was enrolled for months and now it was a week before exam time I had just had a realisation of "Oh hey, didn't I enrol in a degree?" I have no idea where that dream came from or why I had it. I have never had a "didn't study" dream before, university was a relatively stress free time for me compared to my earlier years

haha, that's what gets me I guess I'm brimming with enough (over)confidence to avoid the "didn't study" dreams or the "sitting in the back seat of an empty car" dreams, but I occasionally dream I signed up for some class and then didn't bother to attend it, wasting my time and snubbing the teacher.. "ah shoot, sorry guys"

The weird thing is while I was at uni I went to all my lectures, so I have no idea where the fear comes from

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#340

Post by riizade »

Vedor wrote: post #260
sharadov wrote: post #80

Earlier 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 want to echo this sentiment, albeit for different reasons.

When I have a particularly bad day as an adult, I often think back to being a child (or worse, teenager) in school forced to follow arbitrary rules by tired adults who were more interested in making sure nobody wore a baseball cap than keeping kids safe from anaphylactic allergic reactions.

When I think back to my school days and how anxious, stressed, unheard, and restricted I felt almost 100% of the time, I usually feel immediately better.

I remember being 16 in high school, and during the school day I couldn't just take a walk, because that would be truancy to skip class.

I couldn't just take a walk at night because our municipality instituted a curfew past I don't know, 10pm or something for those under 18, and a police car actively patrolled my neighborhood for violations.

I lived 18 years like that. Allowed to make no choices about where I went to school or at what time.

So now, as an adult, sometimes I just exit my apartment and walk down a city street when I feel like it, and it feels extremely empowering.

Taking a mental health day and not showing up to work, or better yet, handing in my resignation, also feel extremely empowering.

From my perspective, being a child sucked. I hated almost every moment of it, despite being reasonably popular in high school, having a close circle of friends, and never worrying about my grades.

Being an adult is amazing by comparison and I would never want to go back.

But I also understand that to some degree, that's a result of the freedom that comes with a high salary and an in-demand skillset that allow me to leave jobs and take days off with little risk. Many adults don't have that opportunity, and I totally understand how in some cases they could see their childhood as having been better due to a lack of responsibilities.

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