You know the near-universal recurring nightmare people have of being back in high school or college and there’s an exam you have to take and you realize you forgot to go to class for the whole semester?
For more than 20 years I have had one of those about graduate school. The details vary but the story is always the same: I haven’t really finished the requirements for my degree and I have to go back. Sometimes this comes as a surprise and I have to drop everything in my life and become a student again, occasionally complete with leaving my family and moving into a small apartment near the university. Sometimes it represents a to-do list that has been pending for 20 years, and I struggle to find time and childcare so I can do a shift in the computer lab.
So I had that dream again last night, but it had a new feature that I am sure I never dreamed before:
In the dream, I interrupted my work and said to myself and the people around me: “Wait a minute, I don’t have to do this. I graduated a long time ago. I wrote my thesis, it was accepted, it’s on a shelf at the university library, I passed my defense, I’m done.”
And that was the end of that dream! I woke up. It was about 4 AM. I remembered that. I went back to sleep.
Wouldn’t it be great if, now that my subconscious has gotten the message at least once, I never have that nightmare again?
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