The stress of teaching online has manifested in my dreams. Daily (nightly) I have bizarre and complicated dreams about school and my students.
Often the classroom has been destroyed and we are trying out new settings only to have students get lost or fall into crevasses, or I spend the dream encountering small groups of my students and I can't find the rest and when I do find others I lose the students I'd found previously.
The current project my students are working on will get a ridiculous additional requirement that nobody can accomplish, and I awake multiple times thinking "That's not part of the assignment" only to fall asleep again and have another anxiety dream about it again and again.
Yesterday I dreamt that my class somehow woke five monstrous giants from the distant past. These began systematically destroying civilization with cudgels the size of train cars. I guided my students to an ancient thick-walled fortification atop a system of caverns and we all got separated in deep catacombs. At one point I thought "well at least the giants can't get us here," only to see through a hole in the wall that human soldiers and police in allegiance with the giants were forming up outside to invade our bunker. I rushed around trying to find my students to guide them out before it was too late.
Sometimes the dreams are of a sort I used to have in high school: can't find my classroom, my schedule is printed in symbols I can't read, my locker with all my work is sealed shut or the combo no longer works, etc.
Strangely, however, I'm sleeping more than I have in years--somewhere around 8 hours a night. This is unheard of. I typically get 3-4 hours. Is it healthier to sleep 3-4 hours without waking, or to sleep 8 waking 3-4 times a night in a panic at some imagined stressor?
And how many more weeks/months of this will we have?
2 comments:
I had a dream when I was around 20 years old where I was speaking with a stage manager about having to, in real time, transpose all my guitar songs to piano because there was no guitar available. The crowd was massive (my idea of "success" was different then), but the most vexing part of the dream, is that we were speaking in a foreign language. Although I was fluent with my manager in the dream, when I woke up, I was so confused because I couldn't recall the anxious conversation.
Oh, there was a terrible homicidal section of this dream later, but the reason I bring it up is that I still remember this one dream, over 24 years later.
I think it's better you're getting more sleep--even if that means it might be interrupted.
Dude. The first comment on my re-animated blog!
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