I'm an "unprepared for exam" kind of guy.
I've been out of school for a number of years, but I still have recurring nightmares about finals I didn't know were coming.
Never exactly the same (tonight was an exam on logical operators? which I know pretty well out here in the real world?) but some things are usually constant:
- I always find out days before a final exam that I was enrolled in a class I needed to graduate, but never attended because I didn't know it was on my schedule
- I'm always the only person who is unprepared, and the Professor is always cognizant of this fact
- I always decide not to study in the buildup, and completely wing it (c'mon, dream me! Get it together!)
- The exam is always "high stakes" -- meaning there will be very negative consequences if I don't pass.
- The exam room always feels like it's oriented incorrectly -- this one is hard to explain, but do you ever walk into a room and everything is oriented right-to-left instead of left-to-right?
- I always wake up right as time for the exam runs out, so I never find out the results
And for what it's worth -- I did very well in school. This never happened to me, so I don't know where this one comes from, save for general preparedness-anxiety.
Sometimes I wake up and read up on the topic ... for next time.
What about you, kbeans / Lemmings? What haunts your sleep?
I'm nearly fifty, thirty years since I last did a school exam, and I still have recurring dreams about them. Weird, because I didn't have any stress or anxiety at the time... at least not conscious stress.
My dream takes the same basic form as yours. I am approaching a time when I know there should be an exam, but I haven't been to the class at all for the year. Mostly the dream consists of me hoping no-one will mention the exam and I can just kind of pass it by default. It makes no sense.
Other recurring dreams:
An extra room in the house? Sounds like a dream to me, haha. What kind of stuff do you find in those?
cries in nowhere to store things
I never actually go into the room, weirdly. The dream is more focused on the shock and confusion of finding a door I'd never noticed before.