Why do we all have this dream?
And he really does nail it, at least for me, almost verbatim. It starts off with the instructor mentioning a big project or a book, something that would be impossible to catch up on at this point in the semester. Then the realization that you haven't even been attending class leads you to accept that you're probably going to fail. So you start thinking about how that will affect your graduation plans, and then suddenly remember some detail about graduating (for me it's always the date: I've written April 2001 on so many resumes, it has to be real, right?) followed by confusion. It uncanny how many of us share this dream, down to the details.
There is a similar dream shared among many returned missionaries I've talked to, about finding yourself back on a mission even though you've been home for years and have already started a family and career. Yet there you are alongside fresh faced 19-year-olds, who themselves are a little bewildered about why you are serving a second mission. Part of what motivates a missionary is dreaming about the life beyond--who will I marry, what will I do for a living, how will what I'm doing now help me later in life? But you already know all of that, and you know how much (or more likely, how little) anything you're doing now affects any of it. So you are extremely unmotivated, but you go through the motions, and serve your time anyway.
It's been several years since I had that dream, but I still have the school dream regularly.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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Those are my top two reoccurring dreams. Sometimes the school one involves me suddenly remembering about a class that I'm enrolled in, that I haven't been to in weeks. And now, I can't remember where it is, or what time it meets. And I spend the dream figuring out if I won't graduate because of that stupid English class.
As for the mission, usually I'm already back in Brasil, thinking, "hey! wait a minute! what about Shannon? what is she supposed to do for two years?" The other weird thing is that sometimes in my dream I'm rationalizing things and reminding myself that I'll do a much better job the second time around, because i'm smarter now.
School dream: check.
My other constantly recurring dream is of my old job - suddenly they've called me back in to work, and I have to go in, but it's been years since I worked there, and I don't know what I'm doing or where anything is. Maybe that's my substitute for the mission dream.
I recently had the mission dream and I was there looking like I do now with some young 19 year old comp, thinking how long two years is but that it will go by fast. Funny stuff
Maybe culinary school wasn't that scary because I never have dreams about that. But then again it is just culinary school, not necessarily rocket science.
I totally have the reoccurring dream that I'm working at McDonald's again but I realize that I haven't been to work in almost a week and I never checked the schedule, so I've probably missed 3 or 4 shifts and I have no idea when I'm supposed to go in next.
I don't think I have the school one, I must not have been as invested in my education as I was in McDonald's. Analyze that.
I read in the New York Times yesterday that xkcd is publishing a book - mouse-over text included. Should you want to read it in the bathroom.
I almost never have the school dream, but I will occasionally have a dream that I didn't check the schedule at Jungle Jim's and didn't know I was supposed to work. So I have to run in and host birthday parties, or something.
I think I still have that dream because it was my first job, and because the schedules were so different week-to-week. It was easy to miss a shift if you weren't paying attention.
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