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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!

This is my common dream too. I realize that I’ve missed class all semester long and I try to show up without looking weird.

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 wonder what this means. It is unnerving.

I have one a lot where I’m driving on a narrow curvy overpass with no guardrails and I fall off, what’s worse my loved ones are with me

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 really sucks lol

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.

I am not a psychologist nor a mind reader.. but

(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?

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...

We could look at old journals. Maybe people who kept them wrote down their dreams.

Here's one from the early 20th century: https://nautil.us/read-the-lost-dream-journal-of-the-man-who...

There were indeed dreaming of school:

> 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

haha, that's what gets me

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"

The weird thing is while I was at uni I went to all my lectures, so I have no idea where the fear comes from

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.

Oh my god it's due today -- wait I never even have been to that class all semester -- Oh no oh no oh no

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.

> I have dreams that I've forgotten to attend class all semester long

This one is a recurring dream for me and sometimes the context is middle or high school which makes even less sense.

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 the same dream, except it's a marching band competition instead of final exams.

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