You wake up one morning to find that you’re late for one of your most important finals. In those hazy moments before complete awakening, you recall that you’re in the middle of exam season, but you’d planned to take today off from studying because most of your tests are over. Then the shocking realization strikes you that today is actually the day you have to write your math exam. You recall sitting at your desk in the darkened classroom on your first day when your instructor went over the entire course. Final Exam — 100% it said. As in, 100% of your grade.
“Whew,” you think.
“Cakewalk,” you think.
“They’re not taking attendance?” you think, “See you at the finals!”
After all, there are more important courses facing you at the moment. Ones that require essays, and deep reading, and class projects. Not to mention the friends you have to hang out with, parties you need to attend, and shots that need to be drunk. Life is busy, so if there’s a class that you can skip every once in a while in order to make everything else work, you will. After all, you can always cram for the big test, ace it, and it’ll be no different than if you had a perfect attendance record, right?
So that first class was the last class where you showed up.
Now, it’s too late to study. You have no idea what they taught for the entire semester. And the 250-page textbook might as well be longer than Game of Thrones. No way you’re getting through either before the exam starts.
Then, just as the test administrators start handing out papers, you open your eyes.
You’re in your bedroom, under the covers, and two waves of relief wash over you.
You don’t have a math test today.
You never have to sit for another test again.
Hooray! You never have to take another test again.
Or do you?
What This Common Dream Means: Nothing or Something
There are a few theories surrounding dreams. The first, is that dreams don’t matter, even the recurring ones are basically so much waste. It’s your mind farting and defecating after a day of taking in endless stimuli to its senses. Under this interpretation, you were probably under some stress, which triggered some stressful memories that your brain then constructed into this fantasy of a school-time test. We like this version. None of it was real, it’s all just a dream. Go back to dealing with your terrifying life.
Then there’s another interpretation, which you can get out of a quick google search on “dreaming of failing a test”. In this view on dreams, they are your subconscious trying to tell you something. What it’s trying to tell you in this instance is that you’re undergoing a difficult challenge in your life. Suddenly, you can’t say that the whole thing doesn’t matter, that it’s “just a dream”, and that you should rejoice over the fact that there are more tests coming because you’re undergoing a test right now. If you weren't, your subconscious wouldn’t be showing you this dream that millions of people all seem to have when they undergo difficult trials in life.
Here’s why there’s credence to this interpretation: dreams are manifestations of your subconscious mind, which isn’t a distinct and separate “you” the way your conscious ego is. The subconscious is tapped into your emotions and experiences, including the ones you repress. So even though you might be thinking “this is fine” the subconscious will show you the feelings you ignore as images or memories that evoke the very same feelings you may not be dealing with in your waking life. It’s basically saying, “remember the last time you felt the way you’re (not) feeling right now? Yeah, it’s happening again.”
So even if you never have to sit and write a test in an academic institution ever again and any future degrees you acquire will be purely honorary ones due to the awesomeness of your accomplishments, you will still dream of sitting for exams you didn’t study for if you continue to lead a life in which you don’t prepare for the challenges that befall you.
The way to stop having such nightmares isn’t to treat them as trivial and then continue to numb and distract yourself from the crises at hand, but to be prepared for all the ills that could possibly befall you.
Since that simply isn’t possible, because unless you are a sage you will probably end up spending too much time doing one thing or another and not realize that other big demon that’s sneaking up on you, it’s probably better to just treat such recurring dreams as a warning.
Warnings always sounded so ominous to me. But they don't have to be. Your car has a light that goes on when you’re low on fuel, and the new ones will beep if you start crossing lanes unintentionally. That’s what these dreams are like. They’re a reminder to pay attention, and don’t neglect your studies in areas that matter.
What This Common Dream Means: Everything
And then there’s a final interpretation, and it’s the most terrifying. It goes something like this: All of life is a test, and having this dream means precisely what your life means. You are failing. It’s almost too late. You focused on the B.S. that didn’t matter and now, it’s the eleventh hour and you had better get focused or you’ll never catch up. Some say it’ll suck because now you have to do it all over again. While others posit that there is no “all over again”, this is the one shot you get.
So get serious.
Either way, it’s a test. And how you treat the dream, will tell you something about how you treat reality.
If only you would wake up and pay attention.
😂 I’m sixty-seven and I STILL have this kind of dream! I figure it shows that I actually do care about what I do!