Time for available parking to shrink, cafeteria lines to grow, and my free time to evaporate.
It's also time for classroom-related dreams. And nightmares.
I've had academic-related dreams before. When I first started my visiting ass. job, I had the same dream, every night, for weeks on end:
In my dream, I'm in a very large lecture class. One of those huge bowl-shaped lecture halls that can seat hundreds of students. The problem is, I've been skipping class. I've missed the midterm, not turned in papers, and I heard a rumor that the final was this morning. By the time I showed up, grades were already turned in, and there is no recovering my failing grade.
After the first year, my academic dreams switched from me being the unprepared student to me being the unprepared professor. The dreams only start around the first week of August and end after the first couple of classes. I wonder how my school dreams will change over the course of my career. Will they eventually go away completely?
Do you have a recurring dream around the start of the academic year?
12 comments:
I usually have the typical one--I'm late to class because I forgot what time it meets, and the students all leave and my chair comes down to yell at me. Even after I'm fully awake, and the dream is clearly over, I'm compulsive about checking the schedule to make sure I will be heading to class at the correct time.
Usually I have the naked-at-school dream. Sometimes it's the forgot-about-class-for-months-and-also-forgot-the-final.
Have been out of academia for years and still have them. Never had a single student nightmare, but Prof nightmares? Regularly. The most frequent: I am ill-prepared (or not at all prepared) and standing a the front of a very large classroom that is somehow on several levels so that I can't actually see all of the students at the same time. Acoustics are impossible-- and I'm being observed by someone or other in charge.
Gah.
haha blogged about mine yesterday :)
my classroom had moved, somehow had a patio, and on that patio someone was jackhammering while I taught.
Sort of a variation on the "I'm not ready" I guess
I too have these dreams even though I haven't taken a class or taught one in > 5 years. I have both the 'blew the class off' and the 'decide it's a fantastic idea to go to school naked' dreams. Weird.
BBRRRMMMM...
cue:INCEPTION)
I typically have the "oh crap, I forgot I had to write this final exam months after the class" dreams. Usually it's the "last class" I need in order to graduate. Weird. Especially since I haven't taken classes for years!
In elementary and high school, we had tests but most were oral examinations: basically, you are called out by the prof and asked a whole bunch of questions in front of the class, and you get a grade for that. There are no warnings, so I suppose they can be considered oral quizzes (typically ~10 min long). A teacher could examine 2-3 people per class like this, before proceeding to new material. This was a standard mode of examination where I grew up.
I still have nightmares, where I am supposed to be having an oral exam, in high school, in either biology or history, and I didn't study at all. I totally wake up drenched in sweat. For biology, throughout high school, I had this monstrous teacher who demanded verbatim regurgitation of her lectures. *brrrr/shivers in disgust* You literally had to learn stuff almost by heart -- it was excruciating. With history, I simply could never remember the facts for long enough, and it was painful to cram and re-cram to be ready for these quizzes.
So it should come as no surprise that I ended up in a field heavy on math and physics, where I never had to cram anything and everything was clear and effortless to grasp and to remember. (Although I still have vivid recollection of the workings of the reproductive system of worms or the nervous system of insects ... )
My apologies for being incapable of posting a short comment. :)
I've had all the regular ones, but the most recent incarnation was that I was presenting at journal club, but I'd only read half the article, and the other half of my slide set was filled with pictures of ponies, which I had to try desperately to make relate to the article.
Not sure what the ponies symbolize...
Haha...ponies. I got a good laugh out of that one!
It's interesting that several of you have been out of academia for awhile yet still have the same dream!
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