Nightmares About Math Class

Ever since graduating from college a year and a half ago, I've been having the same dream. The dream varies, but the bottom line is always the same: I'm in high school, graduation is near, and I haven't gone to my math class all semester. Panic ensues. I have to make up an entire semester's worth of work, IF the teacher will let me.

Then I wake up. I realize that I have to be at work in half an hour. And that I haven't paid my Verizon bill.

I'm not one for interpreting dreams, because I read in some text book that dreams don't really mean anything, that they are just random neurons firing. But if that's the case, why, in the dream, am I always in high school? And why is the class always math? As I write this it occurs to me that, in high school, math stressed the hell out of me.

Math was my worst subject. In 9th grade I got an A minus first semester in Algebra 1, but it was all downhill from there. In 12th grade I took one semester of Pre-calculus (which was taught by a rather inept student teacher, which didn't make it any easier) and barely got by. Since I already had all the semesters I needed to graduate, and had been accepted into my college of choice, I dropped it second semester and replaced it with something else.

But in the semesters leading up to it, math was a constant cause of worry. My father always got angry if I didn't get straight A's, and was especially upset if I didn't do well in math. (He wanted me to be a chemical engineer. Cough cough.) At midterms, my math grade sometimes hovered in the D range, and I sweated and scrambled to raise it to at least a C. I had to quit the debate team in 11th grade because my grade in trigonometry was suffering.

It's disorienting to be back in high school after having completed eight semesters in college, two of the in foreign countries. But I've come to realize that I have this dream because my brain associates the apex of stress with flunking out of math. College was rigorous, a ton of work, and illuminating, but I didn't have to take courses in things I wasn't good at or worry about my GPA. (I miss Sarah Lawrence...) My junior year of high school I took AP English, AP US History, Honors Chemistry, Russian level 4, was in the Wind Ensemble (the highest and hardest of our bands) and was on the debate team. I was overwhelmed, to say the least. And math was the bane of my existence. So now when money stresses me out, or when work makes me miserable, I find myself back in high school, scrambling for my Geometry book.

Sigh. Can't I just run naked through Grand Central at rush hour?