I’m an “unprepared for exam” kind of guy.
I’ve been out of school for a number of years, but I still have recurring nightmares about finals I didn’t know were coming.
Never exactly the same (tonight was an exam on logical operators? which I know pretty well out here in the real world?) but some things are usually constant:
- I always find out days before a final exam that I was enrolled in a class I needed to graduate, but never attended because I didn’t know it was on my schedule
- I’m always the only person who is unprepared, and the Professor is always cognizant of this fact
- I always decide not to study in the buildup, and completely wing it (c’mon, dream me! Get it together!)
- The exam is always “high stakes” – meaning there will be very negative consequences if I don’t pass.
- The exam room always feels like it’s oriented incorrectly – this one is hard to explain, but do you ever walk into a room and everything is oriented right-to-left instead of left-to-right?
- I always wake up right as time for the exam runs out, so I never find out the results
And for what it’s worth – I did very well in school. This never happened to me, so I don’t know where this one comes from, save for general preparedness-anxiety.
Sometimes I wake up and read up on the topic … for next time.
What about you, kbeans / Lemmings? What haunts your sleep?
I have a very similar dream to yours, where I don’t even realize I’m enrolled in a class until a week before it ends. The main difference for me is that it isn’t an exam that I have to get through. Instead there’s some kind of year-end assignment that is due, which requires me to know everything that has happened in class all year.
Another, scarier one that I have is going into the basement and once down there, the stairs to get back up are gone. So I’m panicking trying to find a way out (and sometimes chased by a monster).