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Why adults still dream about school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why adults still dream about school

#41

Post by matheusmoreira »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #35
paxys wrote: post #31

There's an acronym for it – PTSD. We put children and young adults through trauma in their formative years and are surprised when that stays with them forever.

Yeah I came here to say this too, though I don't think it'll be popular. Schools are like prisons your parents send you to every day so they have time to work. A couple games have riffed on this: https://www.maristane.com/school-or-prison/ https://schoolprisons.com/

Indeed. Glorified daycare. All those kids are there just to enable their parents to work during the day. At some point they figured they should do something useful with all that time so they started teaching stuff in classes which has the added benefit of structuring the children and making it easier for one teacher to manage them.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#43

Post by [deleted] »

CalChris wrote: post #7

This 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…

[deleted]

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#44

Post by christophilus »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #36
paxys wrote: post #31

There's an acronym for it – PTSD. We put children and young adults through trauma in their formative years and are surprised when that stays with them forever.

I remember friends and colleagues having literal panic attacks and numerous other symptoms immediately prior to exams followed by depression and binge drinking immediately after. In my school's history there are several suicide attempts, one of them in my class.

For me, exams were half of it. The awful kids and staff were the other half. It was sheer misery. I don’t miss anything from that time of my life.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#46

Post by jaqalopes »

andirk wrote: post #38
paxys wrote: post #31

There's an acronym for it – PTSD. We put children and young adults through trauma in their formative years and are surprised when that stays with them forever.

Is it related to the school and/or major? My major, Computer Science, was very difficult for me and I needed a lot of tutoring and couldn't miss anything. I saw some others not struggle at all through CS. Then I saw [redacted as to not be a jerk] majors and thought that was the easiest shit ever. The latter people shouldn't have any bad dreams of skating through Sociology. Whoops.

It may amuse you to know that, as a sociology major myself, I always envied my engineering school friends because they didn’t have to do nearly as much reading as me and it was possible for them to help one another on problem sets in a way that doesn’t make sense in writing-based liberal arts courses. The grass is always greener, I suppose!

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#47

Post by matheusmoreira »

christophilus wrote: post #44
matheusmoreira wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember friends and colleagues having literal panic attacks and numerous other symptoms immediately prior to exams followed by depression and binge drinking immediately after. In my school's history there are several suicide attempts, one of them in my class.

For me, exams were half of it. The awful kids and staff were the other half. It was sheer misery. I don’t miss anything from that time of my life.

I don't miss it either. The day I graduated was the best day of my life. Felt like I was waiting for my life to begin.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#48

Post by jaqalopes »

norwalkbear wrote: post #2

Because modern American public schools are basically prisons and traumatized kids.

I sympathize with this take but as someone who was fortunate enough to attend private schools throughout my education let me just say, I also have stress dreams about school. I finished college 8 years ago.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#49

Post by christophilus »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #26

I remember being ~23 and telling someone a generation older, "Yeah, it's crazy; I've been out of college for 2 years but I still have awful dreams about being late for class and showing up for a test I forgot about." I was taken aback as they said, "Oh, I still get those." Sure enough, 20 years later, and so I do.

I once forgot that I’d registered for a course. Got an F in it, and had to contest the grade.

Another time, I had a two hour course, but I thought it was a one hour course, and always came an hour late. One day, the teacher finally snapped: “Are you EVER going to get here on time!?!” The answer was no. No way I was sitting through two hours of that. It was my easiest class in university.

Most of my school-related nightmares have stopped at this point in my life, but they generally weren’t much worse than reality.

Re: Why adults still dream about school

#50

Post by andirk »

seper8 wrote: post #34

Absolutely hated school, but I rarely ever remember my dreams or have nightmares. Is that even normal, seemingly never dreaming or having nightmares?

I find myself gifted in being able to have wild lucid dreams and remembering details, and even learning! I also have nightmares that I can't wake up from and they're terrifying. I often know it's a dream (or is it?) and can't wake up. You're missing out on a lot of fun, but you're also not tormented. If you want to remember your dreams, smoke less weed and concentrate on that blurry moment of going from awake to asleep. Our dreams are in the REM barely-asleep part of the sine wave.
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