exam time

While I can't say I've ever had a recurring dream, I've certainly had recurring themes in my dreams. In the wee hours of the morning, one of my recurring themes popped into one of my dreams. These dreams go something like this:

I'm a student again--sometimes high school and sometimes college--and its getting toward the end of the semester. I realize that I have a final exam or paper due in a class that I have apparently not been attending and haven't taken the time to drop. Although the exact details vary, generally speaking it's an English class. I typically feel very stressed both during the dream and after I've woken up.

This morning it was a college English class taught by one of the JMU faculty members. The course covered later American literature (post Civil War), and I happen to show up on final exam day after not having attended all semester. The professor hands out the exam, which contains 7 or 8 questions. He says that is should only take 20 minutes to complete. I start working and quickly am thrown off because the first question is a math question rather than a literature one. And then I realize that the one sheet has become two, with questions on the front and back. The pages are stapled wrong so everything is out of order. In the midst of all this, I realize that my desk is still covered with books and papers even though I'm certain that I had cleared it at the beginning of the exam. Time is passing and I'm not making any real progress on the test. Oh, and did I mention that I'm supposed to graduate the next week and have to pass this class...

And then I wake up.

Needless to say, I am not a huge fan of this particular dream theme.