Now here's an end-of-the-semester anxiety dream that's new to me

[RoscoeElegante]

Na, I've got about 10% who are interested. It's a huge drop from before the pandemic. I'm hoping this past semester is a post-pandemic hangover kind of thing with the lingering effects of on-line learning. Had many students who never came to class once, and after weeks in, they'd email me to see if the course was on-line or in-class. Epic. Raking in money as their raison d'être? You don't say! Or should I

The pandemic has certainly damaged skills with focus, resilience, frustation tolerance, goal-setting, etc.

But it's also, as I'm sure you know just as well as I, grossly over-used by a generation of excuse-addicts. I spend more and more time and energy sifting the truly crisis-experiencing students from the merely manipulative and melodramatic crisis-proclaimers. Technology's endless spirals of more-return-for-less-input, a culture of entitlement and scapegoating and frantic sensation-seeking, a university "ethic" that tells them they're so special just for blinking, etc., etc.--so many corrupting influences combine.

Or, I should say, temptations. 'Cause it's still up to each person to decide what will influence them and how, what their values should be, etc.

Wow, preachy that. But trying to teach these days is one of the surest ways to rediscover just how correct focusing on character really is. Systems, society, signs, signals, etc., etc., sure. But each person is still the matrix of all that.

Is it Summer yet?

 

[Jared Purdy]

The pandemic has certainly damaged skills with focus, resilience, frustation tolerance, goal-setting, etc.

But it's also, as I'm sure you know just as well as I, grossly over-used by a generation of excuse-addicts. I spend more and more time and energy sifting the truly crisis-experiencing students from the merely manipulative and melodramatic crisis-proclaimers. Technology's endless spirals of more-return-for-less-input, a culture of entitlement and scapegoating and frantic sensation-seeking, a university "ethic" that tells them they're so special just for blinking, etc., etc.--so many corrupting influences combine.

Or, I should say, temptations. 'Cause it's still up to each person to decide what will influence them and how, what their values should be, etc.

Wow, preachy that. But trying to teach these days is one of the surest ways to rediscover just how correct focusing on character really is. Systems, society, signs, signals, etc., etc., sure. But each person is still the matrix of all that.

Is it Summer yet?

Too true on your first sentence and the first paragraph. They've learned a new excuse, one that I seldom heard in the past: "family crisis, Mom is really sick".

There are indeed many corrupting influences or temptations. Not all are affected the same way, and for where I teach, it seems to be campus specific with respect to where the worse ones are. I actually had one student ask me if I could boost his grade by 8%!! When I checked his progress, he had spent 9 minutes over 14 weeks accessing course material and missed 9 out of 14 classes. I told him that in over 15 years of teaching, it was the most ridiculous request I've ever had. Thankfully, I didn't get a reply.

Fingers crossed next semester brings something different, in a better way. Summer is a ways off.

 

[Knows3Chords]

I keep have what I call "stress" dreams. The most common is I am in a very loud and dangerous industrial building and I can't find a way out. No matter what room, door, hallway, I try I can't find a way out. It is all very vivid and surreal. I find myself waking up feeling almost more exhausted and tired then when I first went to bed. I've been thru several years of a very serious illness with too many surgeries and treatments to count. My doctor thinks it's some form of PTSD. I don't like to think of it that way. PTSD is for people who have had serious, real trauma. I find it happens too much. I really hate it.

 

[trapdoor2]

A friend of mine who knew he didn’t quite graduate managed to work 30 years for the state highway department as an engineer until retirement. He was so relieved to retire without having been caught.

My Uncle Bob flew small aircraft from 1930s to the beginning of WWII and then corporate passenger aircraft from 1946 to 1980, including jets and helicopters...no license. He wasn't found out till he had a minor non-moving accident with the corporate jet. He got his [email protected] 65, just before he retired.

I occasionally still have the "book report/test/speech" dream. Can't find it, haven't started/overdue, can't read it, naked, etc. Rare for me to realize I'm dreaming.

I used to regularly have "night terrors" (bad guys/monsters in the house but I can't move or speak). Rare occurance now. Lack of stress helps!

 

[RoscoeElegante]

Too true on your first sentence and the first paragraph. They've learned a new excuse, one that I seldom heard in the past: "family crisis, Mom is really sick".

There are indeed many corrupting influences or temptations. Not all are affected the same way, and for where I teach, it seems to be campus specific with respect to where the worse ones are. I actually had one student ask me if I could boost his grade by 8%!! When I checked his progress, he had spent 9 minutes over 14 weeks accessing course material and missed 9 out of 14 classes. I told him that in over 15 years of teaching, it was the most ridiculous request I've ever had. Thankfully, I didn't get a reply.

Fingers crossed next semester brings something different, in a better way. Summer is a ways off.

I hear ya. It's gotten to the point where I'm very surprised when students don't respond to challenges and opportunities--to learn new info but above all better writing and reasoning habits--by fleeing, sulking, or bitterly complaining. I've broken baby-steps down to baby shoes' stitches, I've brought professors in their majors into classes to tell 'em "You really do have to write and reason well to succeed in X major," etc., etc. Nothing reaches the 90% who refuse to be reachable.

Just to enjoy the washboard rhythm of sulking heels slouching away, you should've offered that 8%-wanting "student" a 50% boost, and a cookie, if he could logically justify the extra 8%. "Uhhhh, like,......"

My parallel here is a student who skipped 50% of our classes, ambled in halfway through class each of the ones he did attend, spent almost every minute in class on his phone, lied about how much he'd contributed to group assignments although he sat right in front of me and knew that each group assignment included a who-contributed-what-%-of-your-completed work component, turned in not only an incoherent fraction of his papers but also re-submitted them verbatim as his "revisions"----emailing me 10 times in four days times to demand that I pass him because, he said his grandpa had died, then that his grandpa was very sick, and then that "rushing for a fraternity is--I mean, uh, like, grandpa is, like, dead again."

Kidz these daze!

 

[RoscoeElegante]

I keep have what I call "stress" dreams. The most common is I am in a very loud and dangerous industrial building and I can't find a way out. No matter what room, door, hallway, I try I can't find a way out. It is all very vivid and surreal. I find myself waking up feeling almost more exhausted and tired then when I first went to bed. I've been thru several years of a very serious illness with too many surgeries and treatments to count. My doctor thinks it's some form of PTSD. I don't like to think of it that way. PTSD is for people who have had serious, real trauma. I find it happens too much. I really hate it.

Not, at all, to play doctor here, but this is generally quite treatable. A lot of what was learned in helping combat vets, first responders, etc., has been brought into anxiety disorder/PTSD spectrum/sleep disorder treatments. I was in an air accident about 22 years ago. A minor one, as such things go, but even so. While I still can't fly, a therapy routine made those all-too-vivid memory-dreams go away. So there's a lot of hope here. And best wishes to you about this.

 

[radiocaster]

At 61, I didn't think me old noodle could twist up a new nightmare. Even so, I woke up from this one laughing.

I'm in an old ex-mill, groovy, brick-walled coffee shop. Somewhere in...Massachusetts? Up the Hudson from NYC a bit? Some make-post-industrialism-chic kind of place that kinda solaces/kinda irks Buffalo-raised rusty me. It's that quiet hour before the staff arrives to rev up for the day. I've got a familiar acoustic in hand, I'm up on the little stage, it looks I'm solo'ing tonight. Okay, I'm ready. The kind of nervous that keeps you focused, alert to the decisions you have in your phrasing, etc.

In walks a combination of my high school health class teacher (also one of its football coaches). A towering, lumbering, cranky ex-Marine who liked to blame then-long-haired-me for the world's ills. Umm, getting tense. He's got his plays-we'll-run clipboard with him. But also a lawyer's briefcase. Tenser, now. He parks his large frame on one of the big leather sofas, crosses his legs purposefully, and snaps open his briefcase. He's beginning to morph into a more looming version of my dad after he'd learned of yet another law-bending escapade of mine while a teen. The flop-sweats start. My feet feel cold. He clears his throat--a bass drum loading up--and out comes a prior boss's voice, the boss who really hated my guts, she did. Now, that's kinda funny. I'm recognizing that this is a version of the stuck-atop-the-rope-in-gym-and-you-might-be-naked trope. S/he squeak-squeals, "You also are two months behind on the mortgage here--remember, you signed for it--and that kid who crapped out the worst on all his work all semester, his dad is the dean's friend so it's a ****storm if you don't hand him a B, and you have a class whose final exam is today that you didn't know about and it's in a strange building's basement. And your fly is open and your B string won't hold tune. And you think that's funny?"

I recognized, in the dream, that it was a dream, and as if my anxiety were really scrounging up the plot lines, as I'm all set to stumble over the semester's last grading mountain. In fact, I would've told the coach/teacher/dad/boss figure, "C'mon, you know I'll get it all done," but I was laughing too hard in the dream. And wanted to hear just how bad that B string was.

But when I strummed a cowboy G chord, I smelled bad macaroni-and-cheese. And realized that the dog was farting me "Good morning."

Life is good when you endure being you in it, or something.....

This guy?

 

[RoscoeElegante]

This guy?

Almost!

He would start each class pretty calmly, but then get riled up as he couldn't help but veer each topic toward his burning rage at hippies, "the damn '60s," long hair, "hop heads," "running away from a war we coulda won but for the rock and roll that ruined us," etc. If he calmed back down and got back to our actual topic, the hippies/hop heads in the back row would say something to deliberately provoke him again. Not only was his rage amusing, but he was fair enough so that as exam time approached, when he'd realize that we hadn't covered the material, he'd pretty much hand us the answers.

I didn't mind him singling me out periodically. He genuinely meant well, in a soul-saving way. What I resented was him being manipulated by the hippies/hop heads. I wanted to learn the material. The hygiene and "avoid VD" I knew, but the nutrition coverage was interesting. Even though him yelling, "I'll flip you like a cheese omelette, mister!" and "Get your ears out of your keisters and listen up, longhairs!" was classic stuff.

 

[Tonetele]

When I dream about work and wake up I think thank God I'm not doing that job anymore. My guitar mate is going back to work next week and NOT looking forward to it at all.

 

[Linderflomann]

There is this common trope that people shouldn't talk about their dreams and that it's boring to do so. Never understood that, dreams are fascinating, aren't they? We lie down for hours at a time every night and essentially trip balls involuntarily.

 

[radiocaster]

Almost!

He would start each class pretty calmly, but then get riled up as he couldn't help but veer each topic toward his burning rage at hippies, "the damn '60s," long hair, "hop heads," "running away from a war we coulda won but for the rock and roll that ruined us," etc. If he calmed back down and got back to our actual topic, the hippies/hop heads in the back row would say something to deliberately provoke him again. Not only was his rage amusing, but he was fair enough so that as exam time approached, when he'd realize that we hadn't covered the material, he'd pretty much hand us the answers.

I didn't mind him singling me out periodically. He genuinely meant well, in a soul-saving way. What I resented was him being manipulated by the hippies/hop heads. I wanted to learn the material. The hygiene and "avoid VD" I knew, but the nutrition coverage was interesting. Even though him yelling, "I'll flip you like a cheese omelette, mister!" and "Get your ears out of your keisters and listen up, longhairs!" was classic stuff.

There's this one:

There's also a sex ed one with him that's pretty funny, I don't think I should post it on here though.

 

[Marc Morfei]

I have always had the same recurring dream. I’m in college and it’s the last week of the semester, but I suddenly reslize there are one or more classes that I never went to or did any of the work. Holy ****! I’m gonna fail. Not gonna graduate!

 

[raito]

I have studied dreams professionally for a number of years. I was actually working in robotics and found that dreaming is a great way for robots to learn associations, and no one in the robotics community is using dreaming as a learning mechanism. I tried to tell this to Elon Musk, but he was not listening.

Back in the UPL at UW-Madison, we had dreaming random (i.e. unsrructured) neural nets.

 

[Whatizitman]

I have studied dreams professionally for a number of years. I was actually working in robotics and found that dreaming is a great way for robots to learn associations, and no one in the robotics community is using dreaming as a learning mechanism. I tried to tell this to Elon Musk, but he was not listening.

Anyway, in general, when you dream, the brain is trying to use what it knows from the past to help you adapt to current stressful situations. This is why dreaming about old houses, old places, old teachers is so common. Dealing with test anxiety, school teachers and fickle friends was one of the first times in many peoples lives that they had to deal with a significant amount of stress. So when you are under stress in your current situation (like during the holidays) your brain trys to make connections with how it dealt with stress before - like during high school.

I am 57 and I still dream I can't find the classroom where I need to take my final calculus exam.

Which is why in part why trauma related nightmares increase under times of stress and/or significant reminders or "triggers".

Adapt is the key thing, though. You can view nightmares as a "primitive" way of keeping safe. In essence, the body/mind conjures up images associated with prior stress or traumatic situations to keep one alert, or awake, to get safe if needed. This makes sense, if we view sleep as an ultimate state of human vulnerability. Next to death and sex, perhaps. This all the more likely to occur (and reoccur) if in some way the body and/or mind are under stress when trying to sleep. And there can be a myriad of reasons for that.

There's a reason old adages like "sleeping with one eye open" exist.

But physical and/or medical factors play a huge and typically under appreciated role. Something like apnea in particular. Weird vivid dreams and nightmares are very common in sleep-related breathing disorders. Also in REM disorders. But that's a very different thing that requires its own evaluation and treatments. In apnea, the sleep cycle (REM in particular) gets fragmented by microarousals. Little awakenings that occur due to lack of oxygen when breathing stops. Since the body is under a "panicky" state, more or less, dreams during these times are no doubt affected.

I recently got diagnosed with apnea (to my surprise, actually), and noted a distinct change in dreaming after starting CPAP treatment. That I kind of expected, though, knowing what I know about sleep disorders. Still, it's pretty stark. In the months leading up to getting diagnosed I had lots of vivid, long dreams (many settings), that always involved me trying to get somewhere, but never being able to, due to zillions of things happening that get in the way. Kinda comical, to be honest. Could be anything. But once I started CPAP, not only do I not remember as many dreams (kinda expected that, too), the ones I do remember involve me successfully completing something I set out to do. Can't really hang an entire hypothesis on anecdote. But I can't deny that this has been my experience.

My school anxiety dreams typically involve forgetting a locker combo. Not sure what that's about. But I must have freaked out over that at some point LOL. The other one is finding out at the end of semester that I had a class I either forgot or never knew about. I've come to accept that I'm undiagnosed ADHD. So that kinda makes sense.

 

[Whatizitman]

I keep have what I call "stress" dreams. The most common is I am in a very loud and dangerous industrial building and I can't find a way out. No matter what room, door, hallway, I try I can't find a way out. It is all very vivid and surreal. I find myself waking up feeling almost more exhausted and tired then when I first went to bed. I've been thru several years of a very serious illness with too many surgeries and treatments to count. My doctor thinks it's some form of PTSD. I don't like to think of it that way. PTSD is for people who have had serious, real trauma. I find it happens too much. I really hate it.

PTSD is just one formal diagnostic category for trauma. Poorly conceptualized from the getgo, IMO. That's all I'm gonna say on that.

 

[Whatizitman]

I used to regularly have "night terrors" (bad guys/monsters in the house but I can't move or speak). Rare occurance now. Lack of stress helps!

Sleep paralysis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[RoscoeElegante]

Back in the UPL at UW-Madison, we had dreaming random (i.e. unsrructured) neural nets.

Could you explain this? Intriguing!

It would be fun--and probably kinda horrifying--if we could plug our dreams into a program to play 'em back to us upon request. Then again, I'm not even sure that our ability to create airplanes did us good. We sure don't marvel at the birds the way we did before. So maybe nix the dream-screen idea. (And I'm not sure I'd want others watching my more vengeful and, umm, "vibrant" dreams....) Just a way to see our dogs' dreams would be enough.

 

[raito]

Could you explain this? Intriguing!

It would be fun--and probably kinda horrifying--if we could plug our dreams into a program to play 'em back to us upon request. Then again, I'm not even sure that our ability to create airplanes did us good. We sure don't marvel at the birds the way we did before. So maybe nix the dream-screen idea. (And I'm not sure I'd want others watching my more vengeful and, umm, "vibrant" dreams....) Just a way to see our dogs' dreams would be enough.

'Real' neural nets have the nodes in regular layers, with nodes from one layer feeding into the next layer. The part that makes them work is that each node does not feed into the next layer equally.

Ours were not this. The artificial neurons were random in number and connected randomly. They did not work by 'weights' but from more of a fuzzy logic field of probabilities. These nets were capable to forming and culling new connections, and in one form even new neurons. Because they ran on those probability fields, you could get synapses firing without sensory (i.e. external) input. You could consider that dreaming, especially as part of the programming allowed for connections to get 'tired' (lowering probability of firing).

It's what happened back then when you had large computing resources available to various types of students.

 

[doghouseman]

I recently got diagnosed with apnea (to my surprise, actually), and noted a distinct change in dreaming after starting CPAP treatment. That I kind of expected, though, knowing what I know about sleep disorders. Still, it's pretty stark. In the months leading up to getting diagnosed I had lots of vivid, long dreams (many settings), that always involved me trying to get somewhere, but never being able to, due to zillions of things happening that get in the way. Kinda comical, to be

YES. There is a theory that the kind of associative learning being done during dreaming has to do with spatial memory and navigation. This sort of makes sense since this navigation learning would be hugely important for people, and really for every animal on the planet, which is probably why animals dream too, because navigation is a critical aspect of life in the wild. This is probably why people have so many dreams about looking for something, or going somewhere, or trying to find something.

I had really bad sleep apnea as well and I was at the point where I was not remembering any of my dreams, but that was because I was waking up to often to have any dreams! I ended up getting the surgery on my throat and it changed my life. Now I can remember my dreams, because I am actually sleeping. Imagine that....

 

[doghouseman]

Back in the UPL at UW-Madison, we had dreaming random (i.e. unsrructured) neural nets.

Yep. Worked with those myself. But after awhile, I began to realize that dreams are fairly well structured and I moved away from neural nets to associative learning of episodes.