The reflections in this months IEEE Spectrum magazine hit a chord with me. Robert W. Lucky says in his essay “The Dream”:

In this dream, I’m facing a final exam in some course that I’ve never attended, possibly because I had forgotten that I had signed up for it, or possibly because I could never find the room where the course was given. Unlike most other dreams, this one doesn’t just melt away like the morning fog with the rising sun. Instead, it lingers throughout the day, imparting a vague sense of uneasy apprehension.

I have this dream, or a variant, about 4 times a year. In the latest one, I dreamt not just of the final exam, but weeks leading up to that. In the last third of the semester I remember that I have that class. I think that I should go but I’m scared to because the professor will yell “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR THE PAST 2 MONTHS???” The class is usually in some unfamiliar subject like environment engineering or engineering safety. Nothing that I can wing.

I understand that this is a fairly common dream. On occasion I’ve asked friends if they’ve had some version of this dream. Based on a minuscule sample, the results of my canvassing have led me to believe that engineers experience this dream more than graduates in other disciplines. It’s a dream that I continue to have about once a year despite the fact thqat it has been many, many years since I was in college. The dream is so real that even now I’m not sure there isn’t some final exam in the next couple of weeks in some course that through all these decades since college I’ve forgotten to attend.

It is oh so true. I am still in school so some mornings after the dream I have to check my registration status (at UBC AND UofR) just to ensure that I am not in any phantom classes. My thought is that these dreams are a product of stress and their benefits are that they keep us on our toes with deadlines and projects. It’s nice to think that I will continuously get these “you don’t want to end up in this situation” for the rest of my life.