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?
Suddenly realising I’m naked. Like I’ll be going about my day, everything is fine, then I’ll look down and “Oh no, I forgot to get dressed!”.
I’ve obviously never done this in real life.
I’m nearly fifty, thirty years since I last did a school exam, and I still have recurring dreams about them. Weird, because I didn’t have any stress or anxiety at the time… at least not conscious stress.
My dream takes the same basic form as yours. I am approaching a time when I know there should be an exam, but I haven’t been to the class at all for the year. Mostly the dream consists of me hoping no-one will mention the exam and I can just kind of pass it by default. It makes no sense.
Other recurring dreams:
- I stumble on a previously unknown room in my house
- My Grandad, who has been dead over 20 years, is suddenly alive again. Everyone knows he should be dead, no-one really mentions why he’s alive again, and there’s a weird feeling that he’s hanging around on borrowed time.
An extra room in the house? Sounds like a dream to me, haha. What kind of stuff do you find in those?
cries in nowhere to store things
Teeth. Hasn’t happened for a while but there was a time when they were always growing or falling out.
I hear it’s pretty common.
I used to dream about my teeth falling out pretty often, and then those dreams stopped. I think its because as I’ve gotten older, the idea of losing my teeth doesn’t freak me out anymore. My subconscious has removed that nightmare from the regular rotation since its no longer effective.
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).
Getting ready to do something exciting, but being held up by something trivial.
For example, I’m about to go on holiday, but I can’t find my car keys. [Spoiler - I never find them and I wake up without having been on holiday ]