A small portion of students with varying degrees of academic achievement have reported having dreams related to their schoolwork, leading them to believe they had done things they actually didn’t do. As a result, the dreams deceived the students into a false sense of security.
A writing major reported having a phantom email.
“I emailed the Gen-ed office a while ago about my issues paper being way overdue because it said there was a 60-day time limit. They didn’t address my concerns effectively, so I was waiting for them to review my paper. Then one morning, I thought I read an email saying they received the paper. I thought the email said something like…I can’t remember. I wish I had a dream machine to record all my dreams. That would be a great source of inspiration for writing. However, I recall it saying, ‘I enjoyed reading about how elephants are not always good.’ I should have known something was up, because emails don’t really sound like that.”
The student took a deep breath and continued.
“So when I tried to find the email again, I just couldn’t find it anywhere. The email was a ghost, or a phantom. I realized I must have dreamt it and continued to wait for the email from the Gen-ed office. I finally got it, and my issues were fulfilled thankfully, so apparently the whole 60-day thing was a lie!”
That’s not the only story. Another writing major reported having dreamt of writing a memo.
“Yeah, I ended up submitting it late because I thought I already…wrote it. I hate it when I dream of mundane things. Aren’t dreams supposed to be weird and incongruent?”
A wildlife biology major had a deceivingly mundane dream as well.
“I got this assignment to go out into a forest of my choosing and just take pictures of wildlife I see. I could have sworn I saw a raccoon and took a picture, but when I searched for the picture in my phone, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I realized if I had gone out into the forest, I would have probably taken more pictures than just a raccoon, because insects count too!”
A computer science major reported repeatedly dreaming about coding.
“Like I’m constantly dreaming of coding for some reason. It doesn’t even make sense in the dream. I code all day and apparently can’t even escape it at night. This reminds me of how I used to dream about doing math all the time.”
There you have it, anecdotal evidence of dreams having a real influence on students’ lives. Let’s hope they don’t get any more deceptive dreams.
