Bad dreams about teaching, anyone?

[Myword]

I frequently have bad dreams, even nightmares about teaching, and I have not taught in over 4 years. Always I am unprepared for class, don't know where my class is or what's going on. Sometimes I am not fully dressed. Scary.

Do you experience this?

[ergative]

Yes, all of these.

[the_geneticist]

Me too!  As a student I'd have the "you have a test in the class you didn't know you'd registered for" bad dream.  Now, I have the "you're trying to run a meeting/teach a class and you can't write on the board" version.

[mamselle]

Your psyche is just tossing up scenarios to help you take your prep seriously.

Say thank you, check to be sure you're not about to actually do any of the things it's warning you about, and go your way.

Minecsings a low-level annoying song when I've forgotten some crucial task, usually a bill to be paid or some such.

I figure it's just some very old, inchoate part of my brain that communicates in ideograms instead of words.

Or maybe not....

M.

[Bede the Vulnerable]

All of those as well.  Plus being behind the podium and realizing that I'm not wearing pants.  I think many, many of us have imposter syndrome . . .

[statsgeek]

Every year.  I'm trying to teach a class that's scattered throughout several smaller rooms.  Or only a handful of the computers in the lab work.  I start the first day of class and realize I don't have my materials so I'm trying to "fake it" until I can get the syllabus copied.  I can't get the students' attention.  I'm wearing only a towel and it keeps slipping.  I find out someone who used to bully me when we were kids is registered for my class...

For a long while after I moved from K-12 to university, I had a recurring dream that my class was made up of clones of the one or two students who were constantly disruptive and I could never reach.  That, thankfully, ended after I ran into one of my "worst" and found out he'd turned out okay! 

[backatit]

Not anymore, although I used to.

I had a boring and dumb dream about collaborating with someone I follow on Twitter, though, who is NOT in my field at all. I was talking to her about possible interdisciplinary collaboration projects, and that was it. Sum total of the dream, and even in the dream I thought it was boring.

My teaching dreams anymore tend to center around retirement (and I'm about 10 years away from that) so I think I'm a little burned out, rather than anxious at this point.

[Liquidambar]

I start the first day of class and realize I don't have my materials so I'm trying to "fake it" until I can get the syllabus copied.

Me too.  I frequently have bad dreams that I forgot to write a syllabus for the first day of class.  It's weird, because we don't have a rule that a syllabus needs to be distributed on day 1, and I could easily, on the fly, make up a pedagogical reason why we're going to talk about the subject on day 1 and save the syllabus/organizational stuff for day 2.

[Parasaurolophus]

Never.

As a student, however, I had the exam dream twice. And I had a dissertation defence dream, although it wasn't really bad; I just dreamt how it would go.

My stress dreams pretty much all involve my teeth crumbling or falling out.

[ergative]

You guys! Just last night I had the most amazing unprepared teaching dream! I will share it here.

I was teaching a new class on fantasy literature*, and I hadn't prepared anything for it. You know, same old, same old. But! Because I actually know quite a hell of a lot about fantasy literature, I decided on-the-go that we would spend our time reading texts and talking about their use, subversion, or aversion of tropes---using TV Tropes as a companion text! And then a student complained that the course covered how to edit fantasy novels, and I apologized for the incorrect advertisement, but explained that we would not be covering editing, but instead tropes in fantasy novels. And then I told the rest of the class that it was only the first day, they had lots of time to do add/drop, and if they were disappointed to learn that the class wouldn't cover editing fantasy novels, they were welcome to leave and find a different class that would better suit their interests. And a couple of people left, but the rest stayed, and then we started talking about tropes in fantasy novels! It was amazing!


*Not in any way at all related to my own expertise

[sinenomine]

I start the first day of class and realize I don't have my materials so I'm trying to "fake it" until I can get the syllabus copied.

Me too.  I frequently have bad dreams that I forgot to write a syllabus for the first day of class.  It's weird, because we don't have a rule that a syllabus needs to be distributed on day 1, and I could easily, on the fly, make up a pedagogical reason why we're going to talk about the subject on day 1 and save the syllabus/organizational stuff for day 2.

The no syllabus dream is my most common one, followed by not being prepared and winging it (not very successfully).

[Juvenal]

All of those as well.  Plus being behind the podium and realizing that I'm not wearing pants.  I think many, many of us have imposter syndrome . . .

You lecture "commando"?  Then I might understand the dismay.  Well, keep the podium "above the waist," hmm?

[Wahoo Redux]

My only 'underwear-in-public' dream came the night before I was to teach my very first class in grad school.

Since then I occasionally have the 'I-can't-remember-what-class-I-am-supposed-to-teach' dream.

[aside]

Same basic idea, but my bad dreams are more likely to be about not being able to find the session in which I am supposed to be presenting at a conference, or not being able to find my paper, laptop, or handouts, or realizing I have the wrong paper.

[Scout]

I frequently have bad dreams, even nightmares about teaching, and I have not taught in over 4 years. Always I am unprepared for class, don't know where my class is or what's going on. Sometimes I am not fully dressed. Scary.

Do you experience this?

Before every semester starts I had a teaching anxiety dream, in which my class was out of control. Talking over me, walking in and out, challenging me on stuff. Every freaking semester.

I have only rarely had classroom management problems, so I guess this is my worst fear.