If I really knew what dreams meant I would … Okay. I don’t know what I would do and I am not sure I really want to know what dreams mean. That said, it seems odd to me that some people have the same dream as others, albeit with certain variations. One common recurring that I have had over the years and have known others who share this dream involves facing a final test in college for a class you had signed up for but never attended the entire semester.
This morning I had this dream twice in two different rounds of sleeping.
I awoke around 5:00 a.m. after dreaming I had enrolled in two classes — a history class and business course — but I did not go to those classes during that term. The finals for those tests were looming and I was trying to find the book for at least one class in order to cram. Someone, a friend as best I can recall, had the book I was seeking but it involved driving to El Campo, Texas, to pick it up.
For some reason, I thought El Campo was in the Panhandle in my dream. It’s really about 70 miles southwest of Houston. The thing is, I don’t even remember where I was in this dream. The school looked more like a high school than a college because some of the corridors had lockers.
If the setting had taken place at my alma mater, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogodoches, then El Campo would be about a 190-mile road trip. Regardless of where I thought El Campo was located in my dream, I figured the town was too far to retrieve a book so I decided to take the test without it.
About 6:45 a.m. I woke up again. This time I had dreamed the same dream about finals taking place in classes I didn’t bother to attend. I found the class and took a seat. The students in the class all seemed to look at me and were wondering, who is this guy? I then began thinking about what would be the consequences if I failed these two classes by not attending and flunking the final? Suddenly, it dawned on me that I had already graduated from college and had a degree, so who cares if I bombed the finals.
Perhaps my second dream was intended to seek resolution of my quandary from the first dream. Or maybe the repeated dream was because I had run out of my dream quota for the night’s sleep. I don’t know. It’s all a nocturnal mystery to me and I am happy to let it remain that way.