Thursday, August 31, 2006

other people's dreams are boring...

But that isn't going to prevent me from sharing a dream I had last night...

I want to remember this dream. And it's my blog, right? Right.

I think it's relatively safe to say that anyone who's ever been in school has had the dream wherein you don't have your calculator and it's the final exam in algebra and you're just screwed. Right? I mean, we've all been there. The rest of the class is filing into the room and you suddenly intuit, without even looking, that your calculator is NOT in your backpack where it's supposed to be. And then you look and OF COURSE it's not there, but you have to take your seat anyway, and the test comes at you over the back of the person in front of you and all you can do is sit there and wait until you wake up.

I've been in school a long time, so I have the test thing pretty well sussed. Seriously. I'm in, like, 25th grade, I think. And since I've been teaching, I haven't had the "no calculator" problem. Instead I have the "Oh my God, I've been assigned to teach 'Algebra I' and it's the first day and what am I going to do" dream instead.

There's part of me, when I have that dream, that says, "Okay, I've had Algebra, for Petessake. I can do this. All I have to do is start at the front of the textbook, stay ahead a few chapters and I'll be fine."

And then in my dream I get to class and I find out they're already on Chapter 15 (which is matrices, and I never understood those to begin with) and I'm screwed and I all I can do is sit there in front of my students and wait until I wake up.

I guess because I'm writing my dissertation and am somewhat beholden to my chair I feel childish and student-like. I'm also not teaching this semester, which feels strange. I'm only a student.

Anyway, last night I had the "I'm the student" dream again. This time it was the biology final, and I'm thinking: "Okay, I was a microbiology major in college, I can pass this thing" and then I realize I haven't read a page of the textbook and I decide that calling in to school with the flu is definitely the right decision.

Sadly, I'm writing my dissertation on the language of heredity and "natural selection" so I'd better have at least a Biology 101 level understanding of it, but call in sick I did.

I suppose this dream is first of many...

I can smile about it now, but in my dream last night I was definitely freaking out. I distinctly recall trying to get Kreb's cycle straight in my head, and then thinking "Okay, I know what a stomata is, so the botany question is under control."

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