Modern psychologists may say that dreams are essentially meaningless, generated by random firings of neurons in the brain, but I have had a recurring dream for years that, if for nothing more than its persistence as a continual theme in my sleep, has me convinced that it mean something significant about my psyche.
The dream I refer to is one of being back in high school. The precise details differ, but the basic plot is such: I am back in high school after all these years, because I want a second high school degree; I have only a short time left to complete the courses; for one reason or another — sometimes I fail a course, other times I feel I must drop out — I don’t pass; because I haven’t passed, I am stripped of not only my high school diploma that I earned about 15 years ago, but also my college degrees. Could this have something to do with being dissatisfied with my education?
Some of my teachers in high school seemed more interested in less than academic issues with me. For example, I had one teacher who wanted me to explore sexuality; I’ve never been a sexual person, and I definitely did not think that my high school years were the time to become interested in sex, and I was greatly upset about this, to the point of telling my psychiatrist at the time, who contacted the school about it and gave them some sore of reprimanding.
That same teacher thought that I should substitute home economics in place of some more scholarly courses; I was not happy about this, either, because I did not see high school as the place to learn about how to balance a checkbook or bake a pie.
Similarly, the high school I attended offered no AP courses, and there was no guidance counselor to help make decisions on where to and how to attend college after graduation. I ended up taking a year off between high school and college, and for reasons largely out of my control, I could not get a degree beyond a bachelor’s or two; thus, I did not succeed as far as I wanted to. All of these elements, I think, play into my disturbing high school dreams.
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