What your stress dreams about high school and college say about education — and you
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TODAY'S STARTING POINT
Millions of Americans are graduating from high school and college this time of year. Some of them are about to join the ranks of those of us who have had The Dream.
The classic version goes something like this: You're back in high school and need to pass biology to graduate — except you've forgotten to study for the final exam. Or maybe you're walking into a college art history test only to realize that not only did you not study, you haven't been to a lecture all semester.
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Other versions of test-anxiety dreams involve sleeping though an exam, struggling to find a classroom, or finding your test written in some indecipherable script. 'There are a lot of variations,' says Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School. 'They can be just as unique and broad as people are.'
I started having test-anxiety dreams in college — and still get them eight years after graduating.
Freudian roots
Researchers have documented test-anxiety dreams at least since Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist who pioneered psychoanalysis more than a century ago. 'Everyone who has received his certificate of matriculation after passing his final examination at school complains of the persistence with which he is plagued by anxiety-dreams in which he has failed,' Freud wrote in his 1899 book, '
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Freud argued that such dreams in part reflect the transition from childhood, in which parents are the authority figures who mete out punishment 'for misdeeds which we had committed,' into early adulthood, when professors assume that role. Modern research has disputed many of Freud's theories about human psychology, but there may be some legitimacy to this one. 'Exams in our culture represent authority figures evaluating you,' said Barrett, whose 2001 book, '
It's hard to know how common these kinds of dreams are, Barrett said, because other factors — including whether you tend to remember dreams at all — affect whether you report having them. Yet the rise of universal public education in the United States during the 20th century and the growing shares of Americans who are high school or college graduates have almost certainly made taking tests — and having nightmares about them — a far more common rite of passage.
'In Freud's time, it would've been an elite that was doing that,' Barrett said of test-taking. 'Now every kid in America is.'
The dreams probably most often afflict middle-school, high-school, and college students, all of whom regularly take real-life exams. But adults whose lives have nothing to do with academia also report experiencing them. Some of Barrett's psychiatry residents still get the dreams despite being past the point in their education where they regularly take paper-and-pencil tests. The writer Susan Van Allen has confessed to having exam nightmares
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Not all bad
Yet if test-anxiety dreams often reflect the role of education in our lives, today's graduates are entering a world in which some Americans are increasingly questioning it.
Many Americans now
Yet despite the stress they can cause, the persistence of test-anxiety dreams also suggests a happier truth for today's graduates to consider: that high school and college are formative times that stick with us long after they're over. Many adults still dream about high-school sports victories or hanging out with their college friends. 'The good parts of college definitely stay with people,' Barrett said. 'It's usually not only test-anxiety dreams.'
If you get those dreams regularly, Barrett suggests taking note of when they recur and consulting a dream psychologist or therapist about the real-life stressors that might be triggering them — including ones unrelated to academics, like a work deadline or family conflict. And if that doesn't help, she has one more piece of counsel: 'I think the only positive spin for that is you wake up.'
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BESIDE THE POINT
By Teresa Hanafin
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Free events this week:
Musical bingo, a mind-set refresh, the kickoff of Summer in the City,
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TV shows this week:
Owen Wilson in 'Stick,' George Clooney's Broadway show, Cynthia Erivo hosts the Tony Awards,
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Gas 'n' snack:
The most popular gas station snack in Massachusetts is Doritos, but the wise travelers of North Carolina and Georgia have it right: Snickers. (
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Open-air tunes:
Outdoor summer music festivals have returned.
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Simply the best:
The Ringer has chosen the 100 best sports moments of the first quarter of the 21st century. But they got No. 1 horribly wrong. (
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As he sees it:
Stan Grossfeld's weekly photo column features great shots of the
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Fan of James Bond films?
Here are 13 far-flung locales the fictional spy visited over the course of 27 movies — including his grave on the Faroe Islands. (
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Fan of Jane Austen novels?
The author's 250th birthday isn't until Dec. 16, but celebrations have already started. (
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Indie films are gone:
Filmmakers don't really take no-budget movies and put them on the big screen anymore,
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