It’s the morning of your big exam, and you’re panicking because you haven’t been to a single class all semester.
Thankfully, it’s just a dream. But why are you still having school-related dreams years after graduating?
Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a psychiatrist and sleep medicine doctor in Menlo Park, Calif., says that dreams of feeling unprepared can stem from stress in your day-to-day life. But dreaming specifically about feeling unprepared at school, he says, could be because those are such formative years in people’s lives.
“For a lot of us, school is really the first time that we got that feeling of stressful non-preparation,” he says. “In a situation where your stress as an adult is triggered by work or some other scenario, those are very powerful memories of effectively the first experiences of being unprepared or late or missing something.”
Dylan Selterman, an associate teaching professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University who researches dreaming, says that dreams about school tend to be “overwhelmingly painful.” Often, people dream about missing a whole semester of classes and realizing they might fail, not being able to find their classroom, or finding out that they have a big test they’re unprepared for. That may be, he says, because the system of school is itself “very emotionally negative for most people.”
One national survey of high-school students found that most of them felt negatively about school. Students often feel forced to learn material they don’t enjoy or are threatened with punishment if they don’t comply, Selterman says. Studies also show that many students don’t get enough sleep because they wake up early to go to school but stay up late to study.
“School often involves high-stress, high-pressure situations where students are competing with each other and with a lot on the line,” Selterman says. “When you combine all of those factors, school itself is actually very miserable.”
Another explanation, Selterman says, is that people may be reminded of school based on the time of year. For instance, the end of August and beginning of September may trigger more memories or dreams of school, since that’s when the academic year starts.
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These types of dreams are so common that having them every once in a while isn’t typically something to be concerned about. But if you’re having them a lot, that could be a sign of another issue, such as having too much stress in your life. Dimitriu recommends that people try addressing that stress either by making a change in their life to eliminate it or finding ways to cope with it.
Some people may also have weird or stressful dreams because of poor sleep hygiene, Dimitriu says. He recommends that people go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time each day, and avoid eating large meals or drinking alcohol before going to sleep. And he encourages people to schedule some time to unwind before bed.
“The human brain can’t go from 100 miles per hour to zero in 20 minutes,” he says. “I tell all my patients to turn tech off at 10—no screens, no emails for work, none of that. If you’re even Amazon shopping or scrolling Instagram right before bed, it’s too engaging, and that gets your brain buzzing a little bit when your brain really needs to slow down.”
“You need some silence, and that will heal your sleep,” he adds. “That will heal a lot of anxiety too.”
He suggests that people try journaling to help process anything bothering them, which may also make them feel more prepared and can be an “antidote” to stress dreams—like the one where you forget to show up for your final.
Stress dreams are “a reminder to focus on relaxing, and a reminder to focus on sleep,” Dimitriu says. “I cannot underscore enough how important sleep is.”
