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 did.
No regrets that I took my sweet time to finish undergrad, in the grand scheme of life it was not time wasted, but time well spent.
Adulting does not offer the same opportunities - so kids bask in your youth! It's fleeting and gone before you know it.
> 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 a hard time, too. When someone destroyed my textbook by writing on it while I was not at the desk, I got note to the parents because supposedly I told someone to do that.
I kinda liked liceum because finally people were more mature. But man, long term, it was very exhausting. The lesson schedule looked like it was set randomly. For example, in second class, being 16-17 yo, Thursdays I had lessons from 9 AM to 6 PM, and the next day I was starting at 7 AM. I was tired all the time and had no time for social interactions.
Please note that the following paragraph is not personal. It applies to the entire phenomenon. For me, it is annoying when grown-ups tell children that it is the best time in their life. When I was a kid, I felt fear a lot. As a teenager, I was depressed and tired all the time. And, you know, if it is the best time in my life, why should I care about my future at all? It is going to be terrible anyway...
Everyone has its own perspective. Maybe you had great time in school. Maybe for my mother, school years actually are the best years of her life. But telling young people that they are living the best time in their lives, and it will be only worse later, is... unfair.
I share your experience. I always felt out of place and struggled through school. Tired, extremely bored, constantly felt inadequate. There were a few teachers that basically carried me through because they saw something in me. But other than that it often felt like torture.
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.
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.
I am sorry if I misunderstand something here – to be honest, English never was my forte, so I may miss some subtlety.
I did not take your post as a form of hubris. What I meant when I wrote about perspective is that personal experiences shape our assessment of reality. I agree that childhood should be innocent and pure. But sometimes, it is not.
No offense taken at all - I agree those formative years of childhood shape our view of the world.
Hope we don't let the bad experiences color the future.
Very much agree with this. I often (day-)dream about using a time machine to tell my younger self a few words that would have changed the whole experience drastically. The main advice would be: stop trying to care. You, my young friend, are not the stakeholder in the institutions you're forced to attend. The system doesn't have your well-being and your benefit as a first priority. The interests of the faculty, parents, and in some cases future employers, are much more important, and you have no way to influence that, no matter what you do. When they think about you it's invariably an afterthought and they have a world of incentives to deny reality, bias the analyses, and treat you and your friends as means to some end.
I hated school. I hated the inadequacy of lesson - some were obviously way too easy for me, while others way too hard. The number of lesson hours per week per subject didn't align with my interests nor the difficulty of the subject. The amount of wasted time was staggering. For example, it so happened that I didn't attend high-school for half a year in my fourth semester. I had enough scores in some subjects to pass, but for a few I didn't, and was given a few weeks to prepare for oral exams. I managed to learn half a year worth of biology, history, and chemistry in 3 weeks, and passed the exams. It was a Pyrrhic victory - I passed to the next grade, but at the same time I realized that I'm wasting (6 months - a few weeks) each semester. I started questioning the meaning of going to school; I realized that I could learn faster on my own, then realized that I would have learned a whole lot more if I could learn with a mentor who'd have my best interests in mind. I also realized that no teacher has an interest in working with someone like me, and that the system is actively hostile to all the non-standard approaches and needs. By the next year, I was diagnosed with depression and missed the whole year while trying to come to grips with that harsh reality.
Later on, I was locked in a constant harassment from an English teacher (a second language here). I learned English in private lessons and on the Internet and I was good at it. That was unacceptable for her. I was to sit quietly in the corner and when I tried to participate in the lesson, I was branded her enemy. The unfair treatment was to the point where I barely graduated, yet I got 97% score on the matriculation exam. I had an urge to find her and throw the results in her face, but I knew I would never recover the lost time and expended psychological effort to persevere.
If I could do it all again, I would focus all I had on breaking out of the system. That system very obviously wasn't made for people like me, but I felt helpless, knowing there's no alternative. It was wrong. The alternatives are always there, even if deliberately hidden as to not "encourage abnormal behavior". I could have tried harder to get away from the system that damaged my health and gave me next to nothing in exchange. And if I couldn't find an alternative, I would have changed my attitude at least: look, Mr. teacher, you're being paid to teach me, and I'm not being paid to learn. So, Mr. teacher, act like I'm a paying customer, please. Because otherwise, Mr. teacher, I'll go through all possible means to fuck you up, cheerfully and as a hobby. Just as you've been doing to me all this time.
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.
I have had a few dreams about forgetting that I have registered for a class, and realizing late that I have an exam.
A more recurrent dream for me is finding myself in the backseat of an empty, moving car, able to reach the steering wheel, but unable to control the brakes.
I've had that backseat driving one a lot, and it tends to come and go throughout my life.
Sometimes I'm alone in the car. Other times there is someone else in the front but they are incapacitated, or unwilling to bring the car back under control. I'm usually alone, though.
On a few occasions I was able to climb into the front seat, but of course then the brakes either did nothing or were so ineffectual that trying to use them to slow down only distracted me and made matters worse.
(1) do you have a feeling that you have control of your own life? Maybe it feels that you are in a prison where "your hand is forced" and you cannot take own decisions, have to play the bad hand you received
(2) are you doing something risky, like working in a failing start up? Or a company thay is going towards bankruptcy?
Wow I have had a dream very similar quite a few times. I'm driving on some very unstable road, often made of sand and the car falls into the lower levels of that road, getting stuck... Sometimes it's a curvy bridge the car needs to climb and it constantly tends to fall off. I thought the school exams were the only common dreams that I had, but at appears that similar ones to this one is dreamt by others too!
Yeah it’s very surreal, during the dream I realize that hmm, this is pretty dangerous, but am still somehow casual about it, and then I don’t complete the turn and the car starts plummeting down and I start saying I love yous and I wake up
It's such a common dream! I wonder how school-themed stress dreams would have manifested for people who lived before what we would recognize as "modern" educations system...
> I am an assistant professor. Suddenly I receive express orders from the dean to teach osteology at the very last minute. Anxiety, anguish * * * when going over the bones in my memory. I enumerate those of the hand: scaphoids, capitate, and I did not know any more. Meanwhile the class awaits me, the students yell. I ask to myself how I will lecture about bones if I have almost forgotten them? Growing anguish and I awaken with a sense of well-being, upon realizing that I am not a professor, I am old and no one is directing me.
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
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"
I have persistent dreams in which I decide to change my career to something more interesting, but requiring a different university degree that the one I have now (CS). In these dreams, I decide to go back to high school to improve on my final grades, so that I have higher chance of getting into my new university of choice (HS grades are a large component of that in Poland). Through these dreams, I attend the HS classes (as a 40-year old), sweat about the homework and exams etc. It's not a nightmare, it's just bizzare.
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.
Yes, I have this recurring nightmare maybe once a year and I graduated more than a decade ago. I am all stressed out because I realize I haven't attended one of my classes even once because I completely forgot about it.
These are the dreams that I have all the time as well. Usually the set up is: I dropped a class but it didn't go through in the system, I go all semester not attending said class thinking that I had dropped it, but then the last week of the semester comes and I realize that I am failing the class from missed assignments and tests, and the only way out is to ace a final I know nothing about so I can scrape by with a C.
I had a recurring dream for a few years after I'd graduated that I still had to sit my final year! The dream was so real one time that I woke in a panic and check my certificates to make sure! I studied in my thirtees as it was something I'd always wanted to do, so although I didn't have any career aspiration pressure the finals were stressful enough and I wonder if this was some sort of sub-consious shedding. Interesting to read the comments about similar experiences.
I have a recurring dream where the university revokes my diploma years after graduating because I actually somehow dropped out of all my classes and forgot to finish the final projects/exams.
That never happened, but I did drop a couple classes before the withdrawal deadline to fix the workload. It feels so real though.
I dropped out of college and never have the forgotten exam dreams. However I did do four years of theater and I regularly have the opening night, don't know my lines nightmare.
I honestly have recurring PTSD from some of the violence I was forced to walk into day after day to graduate, where all school authorities were more interested in a coverup than helping. My grades were shockingly not that good in this environment and I was just told I was too stupid to learn any topic about computers I wanted and had to learn some less prestigious topics after graduation. In this environment I could hardly enjoy good times with friends, there was just too much of a shadow lurking over the whole thing.
I had to leave school to learn, and now that I’m a computer programmer, I feel apprehension that I might have to go back to school to four years to pretend to learn topics I learned independently just to assuage the school systems ego enough that they will give me an accreditation. The idea of going back to school makes me tense up at this point. Adulthood is so much less traumatizing because it feels like you have so much more choice to avoid abuse, and you can choose to confront abusive situations on your own schedule. You’re valued for so many more reasons than your ability to tolerate abuse and produce good test scores.
> 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.
Because my high school Biology course (A Levels in the UK) was divided into modules assessed throughout two years I came to the last exam pretty sure that I didn't have to score many marks to get the grade I was aiming for.
I ended up in a weird situation where my instinct was to prepare really well but, in practice, I should skimp on revision for Biology and concentrate on subjects that weighted the end-of-year exams higher.
The strategy worked out - I hit what I was aiming for in Biology and in the other subjects. But that whole very tactical approach so went against my character that, to this day, anxiety dreams manifest about not having done the work for that specific exam. Often they're further exaggerated (e.g. I've simply forgotten to go to any lessons all year, etc) but it focuses around that event.
I find it weird that my subconscious prefers that over arguably even more stressful (and sometimes less successful!) exams at university. Maybe I was just more equipped to deal with it by then.
> 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.
I get these exact nightmares. I wonder how common is this.
I have no idea how common the nightmare is. I have never had them. But I did mix up the dates for my exam.
My friend called me as I was about to go to the gym and asked where I was, with a very concerned voice. It turned out that I was supposed to be at an exam. I rushed home, changed clothes and went like crazy to school. Luckily they let me in as the last one of the day - of course I had not prepared in the slightest - but did absolutely fine :)
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 did.
No regrets that I took my sweet time to finish undergrad, in the grand scheme of life it was not time wasted, but time well spent.
Adulting does not offer the same opportunities - so kids bask in your youth! It's fleeting and gone before you know it.