I don't really want to think about what this "means"

I know that other people's dreams aren't usually as interesting to others as they are to the dreamer, but I have to tell you all about the AWFUL dream I had last night, because it upset me so much:

NLLDH and I had returned to Rural Utopia, I think because NLLDH got a job there. I was given teaching because of his job, and the first day was a nightmare - I was running late, the students were annoyed, and the students were all VERY MUCH LIKE the students at Former College (many of whom were lovely, but in the aggregate, were less fun to deal with than Rural Utopia's students). And I was darting around the classroom, trying to get everything under control, but the students were sullen and unresponsive and even talking back.

Anyway, suddenly one of my dear friends from Rural Utopia - someone who really supported my teaching and who wrote me a letter of recommendation when I applied to Former College - appeared. She was now the division chair and she was supposed to observe me, since I was newly hired.

And she was appalled at how bad my teaching was. Appalled. She was so horrified, she cancelled class, sent the students home, and then told me that it had gone so badly that I could no longer teach the class. "New Kid," she said, "that was just SO. BAD. How could you not tell??" She told me they'd find me something office-related to do so I could still have a job, but that they couldn't have me teach.

And then I woke up.

I was so ashamed.

  

(NLLDH contends that I dreamed this because I found out I got an interview for a summer job thing. I contend that I dreamed this because I spent ~2 hours on the phone with my friend who was recently denied tenure at hir own teaching-based school. Your thoughts?)

Comments

[Janice]

I blame it on whatever you had for dinner.

Okay, and anxieties about all of the above. It's amazing how we can fall back into these fears. I had a dream that I had to go back up for tenure but nobody in my department would support me or even look me in the eye. Blurgh. And I was tenured ages ago!

[Anastasia]

My crazy friend, who interprets all my dreams for me, insists (with Carl Jung) that everyone in your dream is you. That means you are the one who thinks you aren't a good teacher. I guess you are also the the sullen students, too, but the point is, NLLDH's interpretation that this is about your anxieties seems accurate. After all, if you couldn't tell you were so horrible at teaching, how can you have any assurance that you aren't equally horrible at [whatever else you try]? How can you know? And so you're waiting to blindsided by the news that you're terrible about something you thought you were good at/have been told you're good at.

it really sucks. you were successful as a teacher at rural utopia and then were given the message that you were lousy as a teacher at former college. that seems to make you question whether you ever were good at it. And some part of you thinks you weren't, even at rural utopia, and it was all a big mistake. It also means that no matter what success you have, you'll continue to wonder whether it was real or if the next situation or the next boss will draw the opposite conclusion.

academics have enough issues with imposter syndrome without being treated the way you were at former college. Boo. I hate them.

[Baruch Grazer]

I usually have a similar, but simpler, dream right before the term begins.

The students are openly disrespectful: sniggering, ignoring my attempts to start class, strolling in late. I am of course unprepared: don't have my textbook, haven't prepared a lecture or syllabus.

No matter how routinely I have it, I always awake with a sense that it's really true, and it's my fault. This is why they invented strong coffee.

[Claire Potter]

I think your dream did not make you ashamed - your dream was your brain processing shame, which is one of the earliest emotions we are taught to have as sentient children. My shame dream *never* locks onto my adult teaching career, or arriving at primary school with no underpants -- rather, I am always in college, discovering that there is a class I was supposed to have attended but didn't and either a) I can't find it now; or b) there is an exam, and I have no idea how to prepare.

And of course, college was a moment in my life where I was probably more emotionally untogether than I ever have been before or since --with consequences for my school work that were uncharacteristic and shameful at the time.

Probably more than you wanted to know. But here's the message: What I think is that shame is like anxiety -- it is one of the basic emotions, and it will find an unresolved object to lock onto. You have no reason to be ashamed of your work as a teacher: unfortunately, your brain doesn't know that yet.

[Thoroughly Educated]

Great responses from everyone above. I particularly like Anastasia's take on this: it's as if you've been inserted into your own anxiety dreams as an evaluator as well as angst-er. No wonder it compounds teh awful! In any case, as others have said, all the components of this are things we've all dreamt before, just coming together in extra-special ways :-) I find that in my dreams I tend to go back two or more stages in my life for material with which to play out current anxieties. For instance, in the months after my PhD defense, it was all about the dreams about discovering I had never finished high school and having to go back; when I started my last teaching job, I resurrected decade-old scenarios from my first job after college. The anxiety dreams are always in some way about being radically out of control.

[sleepy]

Sounds like the revenge of the Chipotle bean burrito.......

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Hee, I love the comments about my dinner, because they're so very medieval! (I should probably eat something, um, fiery? dry? not sure where a bean burrito fits on the scale of hot/cold/dry/wet.)

Although I should also add that the bean burrito was last night, so Chipotle is blameless; I had pasta for dinner before this dream.

Anastasia, I think that's one of the nicest comments anyone's ever left me - thank you. I think you're absolutely right about wondering whether any of my success was real.

But you know, there's a good, flip side to that experience: it has really helped me let go of (most of) my attachment to the myth of meritocracy. I used to believe firmly that if you did good work, you succeeded. You know - that if you did everything right, you could control what happened to you. I mean, I should have known earlier that this was a myth (hello, academic job market? But I survived it and got jobs, so while I think I didn't see others' lack of success on the market as any kind of statement about their abilities, because I *did* succeed, obviously it *was* about *my* abilities). But at least I know it's a myth now. Which is pretty useful.

And even more so, it's taught me not to invest my sense of self-worth in what other people think of me, because I can't control that; in the end, the only reactions I can control are mine, and so I have to judge my behavior according to whether *I* feel good about what I've done, not what other people think.

(Don't get me wrong, I still try to please people, and still love approval from others - teachers, employers, whatever. But I think I'm better about judging myself only on that, and evaluating criticism for what it is, not as indictment of my entire being.)

Claire - yes, I guess shame is one of those basic things - I tend to think of it as only about my own failures/shortcomings, not as something everyone deals with - because that's how it makes us feel, right?

And TE, yes, it's funny how we displace the anxiety into another time of our life. In grad school, I always dreamt that I suddenly found out I was registered for a math class that I hadn't attended all semester - so I was in undergrad. (Though I did dream specifically about prelim exams before those - I dreamed I got given a set of exam questions in German! Which, I should add, I do not really know.) I also remember specifically when, as a prof, I started to have anxiety dreams about teaching rather than being a student. (I guess my subconscious caught up with me then...)

[Dr. Rural]

Having some background in medieval medicine, my gut instinct is that anxiety is a hot/dry condition, quite possibly linked to an unfortunate astrological conjunction. It is obvious, then, that you need to have a cold beer. Or several. That should solve your problems.

I love hearing about people's dreams, by the way. I've never understood how anyone could think that was boring.

[psycgirl]

Oh I hate dreams that make me feel so emotional like that :( I hope you were able to shake it off over your day

[Another Damned Medievalist]

It does sound pretty horrible. But I'm all for it being anxiety and maybe worrying about being unsuccessful in the future because you still feel like you weren't completely successful at your last big project.

This stuff runs deep -- I got laid off good jobs twice, and neither time had anything to do with me. There was a regional layoff and restructuring in the first case, and the company went bust in the second, directly related to 9-11. And still, I had those sorts of anxiety dreams where I was just not good enough.

In the meantime, hot milk before bed?