Aye, there's the rub--open dream thread.

Oh my God. You have just rattled off all three of my recurring nightmares. I didn't realize these were common - especially the teeth one (which I have something like once a month). But then again, I'm an academic type, so I guess I fit right in.

Wow. Me too. I'm out of academia, but work as a bench scientist. The occurrence of the dreams seems pretty closely related to my anxiety level.

What is the tooth one supposed to mean????

I haven't had the naked in class or teeth dreams, but I've definitely had the forgetting about final dream, although the one I remember most clearly involved me still being in highschool, and not realizing until exam season came around. At the time I had the dream, I was in university, and had been, I think for several years.
There was a class that I forgot about (couldn't find the class the first day and forgot about in subsequent weeks), but managed to drop it in time.

I'm surprised that I don't have nightmares about having gone to class but missing the exam, given that it almost happened to me. I arrived an hour and a half into a 2.5 hours exam, having thought that it was scheduled for that evening, and only learning the truth an hour after it had started.

I'm a radio producer at the university's public radio station. I've only had it once, but it was the failure to give the then on-air host prep materials for his live interview.

He has had the dream that the guest is in the studio, he has blank materials in front of him and the guest will not enlighten or talk with him.

I used to have the first one all the time while in college. Now that I'm out, I don't. I never knew or thought to even ask if that was a common experience.

Of course there is a huge literature on these things. My education was of a psychodynamic bent, and I do believe dreams have meaning beyond the "day residue". The meaning is highly dependent upon the association one forms when discussing them. So I think.

Cognitive science has been advancing rapidly, but one thing fMRIs can't tell us is what do individual dreams mean, if anything.

Unlike Jung, perhaps, I don't think we can simply tap into some undercurrent of our shared experiences, but I do think similar dreams may have similar meanings.

For instance, I suspect tornado dreams (for me) are related to tooth falling out dreams, meaning-wise. But someone living in California probably doesn't have a lot of tornado dreams.

I've had a variant of the "forgot about the exam dream" where I show up to the exam for chemistry and it's physics. My recurring nightmare is that I have 10 minutes to make it to my flight and I haven't packed anything yet. I had that one before (or just after) every major trip I've been on since college.

I once went to bed with a tooth that was loose as hell, and when I woke up, it was gone. Never found it, either. Sometimes, you just wish you were dreaming.

I'm a PhD student (biochem). I've never had the naked in class dream, and it's been ages since I've had the exam one (probably the last time was in high school) but I have the teeth falling out (or some variant) fairly often. I always just chalked it up to having extensive dental work in my youth (braces, headgear, retainer, etc.)

I had a dream last night where I'm in my parents' living room, and at the top of my lungs I scream "I'm so sick of your fucking psycho religion!".

I recently de-converted from Christianity, and the stress is getting to me, as you can tell.

A friend of mine in the UK told me that the teeth-falling-out dream is related to anxiety over money, at least according to folk wisdom.

I have tornado dreams, which reflect my current location, rather than the situations in which I remember seeing funnel clouds (and being whisked down to the basement for hours) as a child.

For me, nothing says "high stress levels", like the dream about catching a flight without having packed, or without a passport/photo ID. I don't even travel that much, outside of Dreamtime.

OMG, I have the teeth one probably on a weekly basis. I also have recurring "being chased by a tornado" dreams.

This comment made me chuckle:

"I always just chalked it up to having extensive dental work in my youth (braces, headgear, retainer, etc.)"

If having the recurring dreams doesn't make you a nerd, having had headgear as a kid definitely does ;-)

I'm glad that I'm just like all of my fellow "egghead types." Well except that I end up naked in all sorts of places, not just sitting in class. I'd have never guessed that the "you forgot about the class until finals" dream is common.

The teeth falling out dream always freaks me out. It's too realistic at the time. My dream teeth never seem to have roots. They just start...rolling out of my gums. It's like I start spitting out tooth-shaped marbles rather than real teeth. Or maybe it's more like baby teeth, where the roots have been absorbed by the body. It's strange, whatever it is. I wake up and am always relieved to have them back.

Now I have the urge to floss, even though I just did last night. Thanks, PAL!

I never heard about the "show up for an unexpected exam dream" till after I left academia; although I had that experience, in fact, as a student. After I took the exam (20 min.), I waited outside the classroom for someone else to finish. When I asked her if that was the "final" (it was) she seemed to think I was crazy.

My dream last night (or probably this morning) was not about forgetting that I was taking a class but rather forgetting that I was supposed to be teaching a class and suddenly finding myself having to extemporize a lecture about Renaissance era European pottery (which I know absolutely nothing about) in front of 30-35 bored and cynical high school students.

I haven't had the "teeth falling out" dream so often, but the others I have all the time. I'm in academia and never had braces, if that helps the data any.

I'm not an academic, but I'm a software tester, technical writer, and freelance writer (mostly historical non-fiction) with a Master's degree, and I used to teach business writing in a community college, so I've been around in academia...

I frequently have a variation on the "forgot to attend the class until the final exam" dream -- in my usual variation, They (whoever They are) have somehow revoked my graduate and undergraduate degrees and have sent me back to high school. I'm enrolled in a slate of courses, all of which are inappropriate to my current understanding of the subject matter: I'm supposed to be taking a variation on the same English courses I took prior to doing an undergraduate degree in English literature, but at the same time, I'm enrolled in advanced-level foreign language and physics courses for which I haven't got the prereqs and I have no hope of passing. In one of the dreams, I walk into the physics class and I barely understand anything that's going on. Variations on these dreams include: having transportation trouble getting to and from the school, so I can't reliably make it to class; and not being able to find my schedule so I don't know when or where the classes are, and not being able to get a replacement schedule, because when I go to the office, it's empty and locked.

One variation on this dream I've had a couple times was that the same mysterious They had cancelled even my high school education and had sent me back to elementary school -- as a thirty-mumble, functioning adult, no less. Yike.

Personally, I attribute these dreams to having had such a miserable time in high school (contrastively with a great time in university) that I subconsciously can't quite believe the misery isn't somehow still out there lurking, waiting to pounce on me when I let my guard down.

Either that, or the broader theme of such dreams is probably latent Impostor Syndrome, which seems to manifest in academics and IT professionals alike.

I frequently have the "teeth falling out" dream, which a friend of mine suggested is a bodily-integrity-anxiety dream. Since I'm disabled and quite frequently worried about what gasket my body's going to blow next, I am inclined to concur.

I don't think I've ever had the "naked in class" dream, but being naked in public doesn't actually bother me as much as it apparently bothers some people, so I don't think it appears in my pantheon of demiphobias. (Do you measure neuroses in Angst-roms?)

Well except that I end up naked in all sorts of places, not just sitting in class.

I used to end up naked in all sorts of places, too... usually with a hangover, and interesting pieces of clothing that were not mine draped... what? Dreams?

*blushes*

Never mind...

Wow, I thought I was alone on the teeth-dreams too! Weird. That, and the "forgetting about a class until finals". The latter is more common than the teeth-falling-out, but not by much. I usually have the "final exam" abut once a month, and the teeth a little less often.

Never really had the naked dream. Occasionally being in underpants or PJs, but never naked as far as I can remember.

I sometimes also dream that I'm back in high school, but more or less in full cognizance that I'm too old for it. I never consider the rationale too much when in the dream, but it usually boils down to a vague feeling that I need to "complete some requirement for a diploma".

Funnily enough, I also tend to dimly recognize the high-school dream as a dream (or maybe I view the 'rationale' as being total BS), so it's not really stressful. I either dick around, or become aware enough that I can turn it into a lucid dream.

I don't have lucid dreams as much as I used to, sadly.

Computer science egghead here.

I don't really have dreams about school or exams, but I've had quite a few teeth dreams.

My teeth dreams are more unpleasant than the others that have been described here. My teeth don't just fall out--they crumble slowly and the pieces fall out. There's no blood and no roots, but it's very disturbing to have your teeth breaking apart in your mouth.

I think the teeth dreams might have something to do with grinding your teeth while you sleep. I don't know if I still do it, but I did when I was a small child. Unfortunately, I can't say whether or not I had similar dreams as a child.

Alright, now I am remembering that I always have the dream where I missed the final or forgot I signed up for the class....
Dreams are strange in that sometimes I will have a dream that seems recurrent but I can't really tell if it was just a one time dream or not. Does that make sense to anyone??

I have that damn enroll-in-class-and-forget-about-it-until-finals dream all the effing time. I'm always in high school though and it's usually Dr. Wilson's calculus class. Seriously, I must have it every 3 or 4 weeks.

I work in medicine.

I unfortunately minored in philosophy, and very often I would fall asleep reading the stuff. I would know I was dreaming when it started making sense.

Another egghead here.

I have tornado dreams even though I really don't have any waking anxiety about tornadoes. I never get sucked up in the funnel or anything - it's just the horror that people are being hurt by the weather, and the fear it'll come get me.

I have never had the tooth-loss dream, despite considerable waking anxiety about dentistry. I don't think I worry much about my bodily integrity, though.

I have the forgotten-enrolment dream all the time, and I have a whole class of airport dreams, where I'm trying to pack at the last minute, trying to get to the airport and losing ground throughout, trying to find the airport, etc. I no longer have the related wake-up-late-for-finals dream since it happened in waking life without substantive ill result.

I don't have dreams where I'm naked in class; I have dreams where I'm performing the most private bodily functions right there in front of everyone, and either I don't even notice until someone is shocked, or I am horrified but compelled to continue and everyone else is blase. My dad, who was an English professor and suffered similar dreams, opined that those were (as Interrobang speculated about the final-exam dreams) Impostor Syndrome dreams - signifying that the dreamer's fear he would unconsciously reveal his shameful ignorance in front of The Experts.

I left academics 18 years ago after 15 years on a dental school faculty (I'm now in full time practice). I get the naked dream (but never in class - usually I'm at home in the bath tub [which is weird in itself 'cause I only take showers] or on on the toilet and random people just show up). I used to have a variety of "missed assignment" dreams, but they went away a long time ago, even though I still have to do "homework" for at least a dozen board or committee meetings every year. I never dream about my teeth falling out... but I do take out a fair number of them for other people.

I have the teeth dream, but more often I have the "strange stuff in my mouth dream" where I keep removing huge chunks of chewed, gristly foodish stuff from my mouth. And the stuff never goes away, so I'm pulling gunk out of my mouth for what seems like a very long time.

Sorry if you were eating when you read this.

It's been 10 years since I left university, so I don't have the late for exam dreams any more. These days I tend to dream about showing up at work - late - in my pyjamas.
I do get "back in college" dreams, but they usually involve moving in to a new set of rooms. It's not so bad, though, because they are usually a lot nicer than the ones I had in Real Lifeâ¢

I'm not in academia really. I've never had any of those dreams. When I was a kid I had a variation on the naked dream occasionally, but I was homeschooled so it was never in a classroom.

As far as anxiety dreams go the one I get is where I'm eating glass.

I had a full-on geek dream during my PhD. I had been working on a particular problem for weeks. The solution to this problem came to me in a dream in a similar way to the story Kekule told about his discovery of the structure of benzene. I was completely ecstatic over my discovery until I woke up, thought for a few seconds, and realised that my discovery was total bullshit.

Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?

No?

Why am I the only one who has that dream?

But seriously...

Not an academic and haven't had the test/naked anxiety dream in years. However, the teeth falling out dream is not uncommon to me.

Here's one I haven't heard anyone mention: misshaped or over-sized contact lenses. I have to fold them to get them into my eye or I try to fit one edge in, hoping the Frisbee-sized disc will somehow follow and I can't understand why it's so difficult to get them into my eyes...

Anyone else have that one?

All three are standard dream templates, not particularly restricted to academia. All, like any dream story, have acquired many interpretations - I am not sure in fact that it is possible to make any general association between dream subject and actual experiences or mental states. (note: I said 'general'. I am equally sure that for any given individual it is possible to make those associations - just would not be the same for everyone).

Personally, I have the naked one fairly often, also the flying one (one of my favorites since it is usually a lucid dream with some control for me). Never had the falling out teeth, but for many years did have a very strange apparently related one where not only was I naked but also had half my penis become detached. Not a Bobbet moment, no blood or anything. But it was always somewhat distressing. Not had that in the fifteen years or so since I developed trauma-induced Peyrones from an old motorcycle accident, so now I think the interpretation is more literal than most, possibly based on some internal knowledge that there was a developing problem. I find this one somewhat intriguing via my interest in cognitive science, despite the personal implications.

Non-academic geek here. I get test dreams, but it isn't that I haven't prepared. It's that I can't get to the bleeding test. I keep trying, but other things have to be done first, or people keep getting in my way. No teeth dreams, and the naked in class dreams are replaced by talking to people who have shown up in my bedroom for no good reason, where I am stuck under the covers by the fact that I'm not wearing anything they really need to see, or anything at all in most cases.

Then there are the times my senses wake up before my memory does. That's when I wonder who the person in bed next to me is. Eventually it dawns on me that I've been married to him for more than 10 years.

I never realized that the "forgot about a class until finals" dream was a common one until I mentioned it to the b/f last time I had it, and he was all, oh yeah, everyone has that one. The teeth one I had figured was pretty common. I really don't think I've ever had the "naked in a public place" genre of dreams, probably one of the few americans who haven't.

Interrobang mentioned another one of my recurring ones, they discover something was wrong with our high school requirements, and all of a sudden, everyone's college, grad/med/whatever degrees won't count unless we all go back and repeat a year. I thought that was related to the fact that the class after ours, they didn't realize until their junior year that they wouldn't meet the state graduation requirements for PE, and they had to totally rework their scheduled classes because of it, so it's semi-rational to me that they might not discover until after we'd graduated that we didn't meet the requirements, and if you didn't graduate from HS, then you can't go to college and grad school, right?

Haven't been in academia since grad school, just an industrial geek. The teeth ones weird me out the worst, as it usually takes me a couple days to get it to really truly sink in that it WAS just a dream, and not a memory of a real loose tooth.

I think the forgot about a class one is just a sign of having cared about college enough when you were there, and a random enough assortment of classes that you could conceivably forget about one. I never have that dream about HS or grad school, only college, because there were some random classes scattered in every semester, so it would have been possible to sign up for a class and forget about it. HS, no way to forget about a class, too much structure, and grad school, too few classes and they were all chemistry. I've been out of grad school over a decade, and it still slips in every now and then.....

Wow. I thought it was weird that I have these recurring dream themes. It blows my mind that apparently lots of other people have these same dreams. I figured I was probably the only person, or one of a small number of people, who had not just one dream of being chased by tornados, but several.

I have also had several "teeth falling out" dreams, several "naked in school" dreams, and many, many "sign up for class and forget about it until finals" dreams. The final exam theme is extremely prevalent in my dreams, even though I graduated from grad school almost ten years ago.

There are two variations on the final exam theme. In one variation, I forget about a class until the day of, or the day before, the final exam. In the other variation, I can't get to the final exam for some odd reason (I'm lost, I can't get my car out of the parking lot, etc)

I have another recurring dream theme, and I now wonder if other people have it as well. It involves discovering an unknown room in whatever house or apartment I'm living in. In the dream, I've somehow managed to never open, or even notice, a door in plain sight in the house/apartment in which I live. Behind the door is usually a nicely furnished room.

When I was in college I'd have the "exam and I forgot to study" dream. Then when I was faculty, I had the dream in which I had to teach a class and I'd forgotten to prepare.

Then it actually happened; I saw a group of students assembling in a classroom, and thought, "That's funny; I thought that I was lecturing next in that course, but that isn't until next week--isn't it?" No, it was now. Gave the lecture off the top of my head. Not the best lecture I've ever given, but not the worst either.

Haven't had that dream since.

I'm not an academic, exactly. Just a perpetual student.

I had that dream of signing up for a very important class, and skipping it day after day, intending to work like crazy "next week" and catch up. And always knowing that it was impossible. The dream recurred for several years. I was not in school at the time. (Maybe that was the problem.)

No teeth dreams. But being naked in public places, oh, yes. And always with a large cast of assorted friends and colleagues.

PhD student reporting in. Never had the class related ones, but holy shit: almost every time I remember a dream after I've woken up, it's either one that involves my teeth breaking or falling out (and/or trains of some kind). I thought that was just me! It drives me crazy trying to figure out what it means.

I've been out of school for many years now, but I still get the forget-about-class-until-finals dream. I didn't realize it was common.

I recently had a naked-in-a-job-interview dream (I thought it very unreasonable of the interviewer to expect me to have a resume and cover letter with me; I was naked, after all).

I don't recall ever having the tooth-falling-out dream.

-mark.

I have that damn enroll-in-class-and-forget-about-it-until-finals dream all the effing time. I'm always in high school though and it's usually Dr. Wilson's calculus class. Seriously, I must have it every 3 or 4 weeks.

Posted by: FullFrontal | May 7, 2008 5:17 PM

Ditto. Haven't been in academia for two years now, but it seems like whenever I'm on a big deadline I have the "oh *@$%, I completely forgot about my Calculus exam!" dream. Weirdly, I'm also always back in high school for it (well, I guess not that weird, since that's where the Calculus classes are) and I also can't seem to make it to the classroom on time. Usually because I can't remember my locker combination to pick up my stuff before class starts, or something like that.

I've never had the other two, though.

Those are three on my re-occuring dreams...but the worst one is the one where I am under water, and swimming upward as fast as I can, but there's just more water on top of me...or I get to the top and there's glass or ice or something over the surface and I can't get out...or someone is holding me under by my head, or something is holding onto my foot...

shudder.

Not in academia now, but have had lots of the final exam dreams. I have fewer now then in the past when I was in school (as teacher and as student), but I just had one this past week. I've also had the teeth dream a few times. And the "I have to go back to high school to repeat a grade" too. Once, I even had to go back to elementary school! But I've never had the sitting naked in class dream.

I'm not in academia. I'm retired after 20+ years as a mainframe programmer.

I no longer have the dreams, they tapered off after retirement.

The dreams I used to have:
Going to final exam after not going to class all term

Naked in class (and at work and at the mall...)

Teeth falling out: my variation was waking up (within the dream) and all my crowns and fillings were gone (that's about every tooth past the incisors)

Another recurring dream: I can't find something (the car, the new office, a bathroom, clothes...)

After retirement I had a recurring dream that I was in some horrible situation at work, and it would occur to me that I was retired; and I would stand up and walk out. They also tapered off.

The one where you sign up for a class and forget about it until finals

I have this one a few times a year. For some reason it's never a science class. It's always something like english or history.

My version of the academic dream is I show up to class and realize I have no real lesson plan/lecture. Meanwhile students are getting up and walking out or wandering around and I can't remember their names and can't get them to listen. I know I'm stressed when that dream shows up. I chalk it up to substitute teaching high school for a year. shudder.

Okay, my turn.

Naked: I shift a lot on the precise level of nudity from boxers and shirt, succeeding in finding pants to general nudity. Though unlike the cartoon characters who have them, no one ever notices in the dream, much less points and laughs. I'm the only one who bothers to care about my pantsless state.

Forgotten class: Shows up more often now that I've actually gone through the act of registering for classes. Through high school, it was forgetting homework. Usually, I start remembering the class 2/3rds through and dread that missing all the work up to that point is going to render the final moot.

Teeth: I only have dreams of one tooth (usually a cuspid) coming loose. My mother told me that during times of stress, she dreams about all her teeth falling out and says she sometimes wakes up with her hand to her mouth trying to catch them all.

My own recurring dream: I HAVE TO FIND A BATHROOM! I'm stuck wandering a building looking for a bathroom or at least a stealthy place to pee. I usually find one at the end, and mercifully, the results have yet to translate into real life, beyond rearranging my priorities when I wake up.

When I was a student I had the "forgot about the class or final exam" dream everyone once in a while. After years of teaching, I still have the "forgot all about preparing to teach a class" version occasionally. Both tend to wake me up totally wired. Never had the teeth one. Hope I don't start having it now that I've read the blog. Never had the naked in public one either. People seem to be getting more comfortable with nudity anyway.

I can laugh at this now that the exam is over and everything went smoothly, but it wasn't funny at 1:30 AM today. I dreamt that there were 4X the number of freshman medical students in my class, and the lecture hall had morphed into two partitioned rooms, plus a strange open-air terrace, like the seating at a baseball stadium. Like the Zephyrs stadium in New Orleans, to be precise.

The students ignored my instructions, and seated themselves in bunches, rather than the requisite two seats apart. There were not enough exams for all the students, and the exam packets were in tatty old binders, instead of neatly paperclipped together, as we always do. To make matters worse, each exam "binder" had to include all sorts of free crap from pharmaceutical companies, like T-shirts, pens, penlights, and drug samples. Of course all the crap kept falling out of the binders, and it seemed very important that every student received each item of crap, along with the exams and scantrons.

If I kept hard liquor in the house, I would have had a shot when I woke up from that dream. Phew!

I've never had dreams of teeth falling out, but I've often had dreams of signing up for classes in a new high school but not knowing where the class is, and that there is an exam.

But I often thought that had to do do with remembering things like that actually happening. I was an Army brat, and I attended school in nine separate school districts. I went to kindergarten in three different states, and I did actually end up in the wrong classroom after an assembly (traumatic memories last longer). And in 8th grade I moved in October from a school district that started in September to one that started in early August. Since I had progressed so much in math during 7th grade in Minnesota, the new school put me in Algebra. My first week in the new school included (also it started on a Tuesday because they still took Columbus Day off on the Monday near Oct. 12th):
1) a geography test, from material I had never seen
2) an algebra quiz on Wednesday, followed by an algebra mid-term on Friday
3) completely missing my bus because they loaded on both the back and the front of the building

So my school nightmares were just reruns of actual events. (oh, and on the first day of school of the last school I attended I spent in a long line with a bunch of other kids while the counselors were sorting through the schedules --- apparently the Army moved more units into the Ft. Hood that year and Killeen High School had not planned accordingly... oh, that also included a bus nightmare, where the school office directed me to this strange intersection away from the housing development where the bus drove right by me!).

I seem to have an odd attachment to the first house we bought. We spent ten years remodeling it, but moved fifteen years ago to a house we built (and still work on). But I still have dreams that take place in the old house, including going into the basement which turns into a huge cavernous space full of stuff... then it turns into a sci-fi dream. Weird.

Well, it looks like someone else will add the exam nightmare to real life:
http://williamthecoroner.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/anatomy-and-physiolog…

I have the dream about not going to a class and then having to go to the final, and it's always a math class. This tells you most of what you need to know about me and math. I spend much of the dream trying to drop the class so I don't have to take the final. I also have the one about the teeth falling out and it always seems so real every time. I sometimes have the naked in public one but as someone else commented, nobody seems to notice. Then, there's the one where you have to go back to high school. I haven't had that one for awhile.

One that I haven't seen anyone mention is forgetting to bring my gym clothes on a day that we have gym class. I've been out of high school for 15 years and I still have that one every so often.

I'm not very academic and of those mentioned in the original post I've only had the teeth falling out one. But my academic husband has all those dreams and a lot of other school related ones as well.

I have had tornado dreams as long as I can remember and it's interesting to me that other people have them too. I've always kind of thought of the tornado as a symbol of random violence or misfortune.

I also have a lot of dreams where I am not naked but missing some crucial item of clothing.

Never had the "teeth falling out" dream, but now that you mentioned it, thanks for the upcoming nightmares.

I also have tornado dreams. Not sure why. I've never even seen a tornado IRL. And in the dreams, I'm not scared. The whole thing always seems pretty cool, actually.

My most reaccuring dream is probably about my mother who passed away in 2001. I dream about her in the home I grew up in. I guess those are my most vivid memories of my childhood.

The dreams I hate the most- the ones where I get into a fight. Not because I get beat up, but because I move so damn slow. It's like trying to throw a punch underwater, but a lot slower. I'm not sure anyone ever gets hit.

And finally, the dream where the lights never work. I hate that one. It's pitch dark and the lights won't come on. Always glad when I wake up from that one.

Love the topic. Used to have a lot of exam dreams, naked dreams, and teeth falling out dreams. I read in a cheezy "Dream Dictionary" that the teeth dream means a person is growing from child into adult.

I'm a boardgame designer so weirdly enough I dream of making strange but exciting boardgames. I also dream of strange foreign landscapes so often I could map out my own dream world. Here's a map:
http://zoomquilt2.madmindworx.com/zoomquilt2.swf