Woke up this morning feeling as if I had barely slept, after a particularly egregious "I have to do my A levels again" dream, which I am now having a couple of times a week. Every time it is exhausting as I explain that I've already done my A levels and have been to university twice, so surely I don't actually have to do them again, and this is just like that dream where I have to do my A levels again. A brief stand back from my life reveals that it is in fact an awful lot like having to do my A levels over and over (second novel syndrome anyone?) so I suppose it isn't that surprising. More surprising was the friend who recently revealed that she too has the dream about having to do her A levels again, only she never actually did A levels.
On the theme of revisiting childhood, this week's Music Monday is Shirley Ellis performing The Clapping Song with some fabulous 1960s Breton top-wearing backing dancers. Shirley's dancing is slightly less enthusiastic...
Employee gets laid off due to extreme body odor: ‘I genuinely felt bad for
him. He had only just started the job and hadn’t really had the chance to
show what he could contribute. You could tell he felt embarrassed and
ashamed’
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To pass the smell test
I felt really identified with this story because I've had to deal with this
issue multiple times in my life. I don't mean with my bo...
2 hours ago
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What is it with A Levels and anxiety dreams? Mine take the form of realising I haven't done my RE coursework (very occasionally it varies with my dissertation) - it's never too late to throw my hands up and say 'fuck it'; always just enough time to do it, but do it badly. There's probably a theory to be worked on about A Levels being the first time real potential-future-screwing pressure is brought to bear on a person, somehow seared into the psyche to rear its vile adolescent head whenever the adrenalin flows for ever more.
Anxiety dreams blow. (Is my other, less cerebral, response.)
No A-Levels here in Canada, so my recurring dream is that I'm trying to find the room where they're holding the final exam for a course I forgot to attend all year. It's usually in math or science, neither of which I pursued in university -- for good reason. I got another variation when I became a teacher. This time I'm trying to give a lesson and I haven't prepared anything. Everyone I know has a version of this dream.
Years after "The Clapping Song" was a hit, the girls at my elementary school would line up in two long rows across the school yard to clap out "Three-Six-Nine". We'd immediately follow with "My Mommy Told Me" then finish with "Three-Six-Nine" in double time.
These anxiety dreams are so awful but how terrific when you wake and find them nonsense. I've certainly had the "exam" one in the past, though there are other variations which I still have occasionally. But I actually had the exam scare for real once for a mid-term law exam when I had revised just the night before each topic exam. I turned up full of beans for an exam on topic A but when I turned the paper over it was topic B which I hadn't yet got round to. AAArgh! Luckily I was OK as I had been listening in lectures and you could use the phrase "in a decided case" when you couldn't recall the exact citation as long as you could recall the relevant facts. Having made a career (not in law!) of "winging it" I am not surprised that this dream still visits me on occasions".
Last week, I would have agreed with you that the dream of re-taking your "A" levels was linked to "2nd novel syndrome", but this week I have been reading "Psychology and Alchemy" and now have been so influenced by Jung that I would agree with him and say that dreams are messages from the unconscious. So, seeing as you are very conscious of the fact that you are writing a 2nd novel, and presumably you are also conscious of any difficulties that you are experiencing, why would you need a dream to tell you about an anxiety that you are already conscious of?
The fact that you are having the dream repeatedly would indicate that you are still not getting the true message, and so the unconscious is repeating it, and will do so until you understand what the dream is really about.
But then, I am just a layman who has half read one book on psychology... so go with your instinct.
Quite right, Tokyo Girl, and I didn't realise that the A level dream could have anything to with my second novel until I wrote this post... So let's see if I have it again. (I hope NO.)
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