I awakened from a dream in which I was planning a graduate seminar on Leonard Cohen.
It seemed odd; I knew even in the dream that this was not my area, but I was conscientiously working out what I would need to read to get up to speed on recent Canadian poetry (because I decided the focus would have to be on his lyrics as poetry, since there is no way I could manage the musical side of things), what I'd assign the students to read, how much background-filling I'd have to do on cultural and historical references (Chelsea Hotel, Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square, Quebecois conflicts . . . ), what kinds of writing assignments I should give.
I hate having dreams like that. I even prefer nightmares, actually, because they are definitely dreams, part of the night's passage, nothing to do with real life. But a dream about writing syllabi makes me feel that I have been at work for hours before I even get up. What do you mean, I still have to write quizzes for the undergraduate course I'm teaching this term? I've done my teaching prep work for the day! Haven't I?
In the bad old days of majoring in a STEM field, I learned to stay up till I finished my problem sets, because otherwise I dreamed about doing them (without, however, coming up with the solutions in my sleep) and it seemed like they took twice as long. Plus ça change, hein?
6 comments:
If it helps, I would totally take that seminar! But I hate dreams like that too.
LOL! The dreams I hate are the ones in which I dream myself writing a brilliant conclusion to an argument that I've been struggling with because when I wake up, I can never remember exactly what it was that I said.
I've blogged before about "sleep teaching," which is the phenomenon when you spend the whole night either teaching, in advance, what you are supposed to cover the next day or -- even worse -- re-teaching what you did the day before.
But, what you are describing sounds more like the typical "teaching nightmare" -- I know I have one before every new semester and it's one of the ways I know my subconscious is gearing up for a new set of classes/students.
Either way = exhausting.
Ok, that's really interesting that you would have that dream. I wonder if your subconscious started remembering our conversation from last October about an annotated edition of Cohen's works...
That does sounds like an interesting seminar!!
(I sleep teach AND write articles in my sleep. In fact, I'm much more productive on the article front in my dreams. Wish I were that motivated in real life! LOL.)
The dream's a very clear and vivid sign for you to go plan that Cohen seminar. I'd sign up for it!
Post a Comment