College Test Nightmare Gets Around

Ever have a nightmare that you are back in college and about to take a test but are completely unprepared? You are not alone.

A recent survey of persons who graduated from Transylvania University 10 to 20 years ago found that 27% had recurring dreams about college tests.

Anne Shurling, a Transylvania psychology professor who conducted the survey, said the graduates often felt distress, anguish, fear and terror in the dreams.

Arriving unprepared was the most common theme. Some dreamers “couldn’t find the building or they walked in and all the students were different,” she said.

Of the survey’s 188 respondents, aged 30 to 45, 50 said they had dreams about exams and 95% of those said the dreams were unpleasant.

A few respondents said they had two or three different recurring dreams about exams. Some said they involved oversleeping, others were unable to move their arms and fingers and some said they didn’t even realize they were enrolled in the class.

In one nightmare, the person’s parents watched during the exam. “I thought that was terribly Freudian,” Shurling said.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, believed people with high grades were likeliest to have such dreams, Shurling said, but she found no correlation between grades and dreams. She found exam nightmares were more common among men.