Exam Dreams Stay Around After School is Done

Wednesday, 01 June 2011 | by Pat's Picks

Sometimes you haven’t studied. Sometimes you’re in the wrong class. Sometimes you’re naked. As school winds down for the year, the Oregonian takes a look at one lesson students would prefer to leave in the classroom: the exam dream. Considered one of the most common anxiety dreams, almost everyone has been subjected to a test-related nightmare.

Interestingly, it seems to be a recent-ish phenomenon, a symptom of our test-based education system. Psychologists say that in countries without high-stakes exams (Argentina, for example), test dreams don’t exist. Freud said that the test dream continues to resurface throughout life because “the body and brain remember the pressure to perform well on tests and use it as a metaphor for fear of failure in waking life.” Having a test dream can signify something unresolved in one’s life.