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Good news, you'll have those dreams all your life, and they'll get really old by the time you're 50.

by NikkiA 2y ago

smusamashah 2y ago
And this article doesn't say anything about why you are still getting those dreams (occasionally) when you have given all possible exams decades ago?
- infotropy 2y ago
  This is the more interesting question, I think. 30+ years later still having dreams about exams for classes I forgot to drop, exams I didn’t study for, etc etc. Having dreams about upcoming exams seems obvious compared to why a lot of us have dreams years and decades after your college years are over.
  - NikkiA 2y ago
    I suspect that it's that our brains have associated 'deadline stress' with that time period of our lives, and so to release any such stress it plays it out in dream form. Oddly enough, I don't get college exam dreams, just (secondary) school exam dreams, and tbh I wasn't that stressed out by my exams at college, so it makes sense.
- credit_guy 2y ago
  I think we are like AlphaZero. We play chess (or go) with ourselves, in our dreams. That's how we learn. We create our own Microsoft Flight Simulator and step in it, and "fly". And crash. And crash again. That's why most dreams are quite unpleasant. If you don't crash in the simulation, then the simulation was not all that useful. PS: If you want to create an AI_Zero that creates its own simulation and plays in it to train itself, go for it. Just come back to Hacker News and tell us about it.
ashleyn 2y ago
I recently had a dream I was back in middle school, as an adult, to take an english test that was nearly 20 years overdue. The teacher giving it probably isn't even alive anymore.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  I had some similar dream where something overdue in high-school would invalidate passing the grade and, in turn, like a domino effect would invalidate all my education afterwards. Woke up sweating.
z500 2y ago
Unless you're like me and all your dreams are fever dreams
saltcured 2y ago
I used to have these frequently, as well as a variant where I was getting lost trying to find my way to class on a very large campus full of detours, and then realizing I wasn't even sure what my class schedule was that day. But after a while these college based dreams faded. I actually came back to a childhood scenario, walking a newspaper route and suddenly realizing I didn't know which houses I'd already delivered or which ones still needed a paper. And about midway through my career, most of these got replaced with various logistics challenges in generic international airports and vast hotels or conference/convention centers.
- NikkiA 2y ago
  > But after a while these college based dreams faded. I actually came back to a childhood scenario, walking a newspaper route and suddenly realizing I didn't know which houses I'd already delivered or which ones still needed a paper. That used to actually happen to me, thankfully I don't think I've ever had it as a dream though, not yet anyway.

Good news, you'll have those dreams all your life, and they'll get really old by the time you're 50.

by NikkiA 2y ago

Good news, you'll have those dreams all your life, and they'll get really old by the time you're 50.

And this article doesn't say anything about why you are still getting those dreams (occasionally) when you have given all possible exams decades ago?

infotropy 2y ago
This is the more interesting question, I think. 30+ years later still having dreams about exams for classes I forgot to drop, exams I didn’t study for, etc etc. Having dreams about upcoming exams seems obvious compared to why a lot of us have dreams years and decades after your college years are over.
- NikkiA 2y ago
  I suspect that it's that our brains have associated 'deadline stress' with that time period of our lives, and so to release any such stress it plays it out in dream form. Oddly enough, I don't get college exam dreams, just (secondary) school exam dreams, and tbh I wasn't that stressed out by my exams at college, so it makes sense.
credit_guy 2y ago
I think we are like AlphaZero. We play chess (or go) with ourselves, in our dreams. That's how we learn. We create our own Microsoft Flight Simulator and step in it, and "fly". And crash. And crash again. That's why most dreams are quite unpleasant. If you don't crash in the simulation, then the simulation was not all that useful. PS: If you want to create an AI_Zero that creates its own simulation and plays in it to train itself, go for it. Just come back to Hacker News and tell us about it.

ashleyn 2y ago

I recently had a dream I was back in middle school, as an adult, to take an english test that was nearly 20 years overdue. The teacher giving it probably isn't even alive anymore.

onemoresoop 2y ago
I had some similar dream where something overdue in high-school would invalidate passing the grade and, in turn, like a domino effect would invalidate all my education afterwards. Woke up sweating.

z500 2y ago

Unless you're like me and all your dreams are fever dreams

saltcured 2y ago

I used to have these frequently, as well as a variant where I was getting lost trying to find my way to class on a very large campus full of detours, and then realizing I wasn't even sure what my class schedule was that day. But after a while these college based dreams faded. I actually came back to a childhood scenario, walking a newspaper route and suddenly realizing I didn't know which houses I'd already delivered or which ones still needed a paper. And about midway through my career, most of these got replaced with various logistics challenges in generic international airports and vast hotels or conference/convention centers.

NikkiA 2y ago
> But after a while these college based dreams faded. I actually came back to a childhood scenario, walking a newspaper route and suddenly realizing I didn't know which houses I'd already delivered or which ones still needed a paper. That used to actually happen to me, thankfully I don't think I've ever had it as a dream though, not yet anyway.