My Musings

PS-Ashley Rocks!

Monday, February 09, 2004

Pathetic Excuse for a Nightmare

Last night I dreamt that it was already next August, and my dream began on the first day of classes. My first class was chemistry, which I knew was in Schmitt lecture hall. I’m not sure why I was in chemistry class—I’m taking it this semester, and come May I will be done with science forever, but maybe in my dream I failed the class and had to retake it. The dream didn’t specify. In any case, I sat near two of my friends from Pierce—Nicole and Meredith—and after the class was over I followed them to math, which we all had together.

The dream started to go a little weird after math class ended. I wasn’t entirely clear on where I had to go next, so I followed Nicole to her next class. She was quiet and sullen and made it blatantly evident that she had no desire whatsoever to talk to me, which made me sad.

“So, what class do you have now?” I asked, as cheerfully as I could.

“Philosophy,” Nicole said in a perfect monotone.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, trying in vain to revive the dying conversation. “You must be taking a really advanced class. It’s 300- or 200-level, right?”

I forget what her answer was, but we soon parted ways and I wondered why she seemed to be so angry at me. Then I focused my attention on a more pressing problem, which was that I had absolutely no idea where or what the hell my next class was. Somehow I ran into Meredith, who said she had to fix a scheduling problem. I had a scheduling problem, too, which was namely that I did not know what on Earth my schedule was. What a I needed to do was find a computer with an internet connection so that I could download a copy of my schedule, and since Meredith also needed a computer to fix her scheduling problem, we both went to the library to use the computers there.

At the library, things got bad. Meredith’s scheduling problem was very minor and she immediately set about fixing it, but I suddenly realized that I not only did not know what my schedule was, but that I did not, in fact, have a schedule at all. It became clear to me that the whole class registration thing had somehow passed me by. I simply hadn’t signed up for a single class. I had gone to chemistry and math class because I knew where they were and some of my friends were also taking them, but I wasn’t actually registered for either one. So for me it was more than just a matter of downloading a schedule; I had to make one.

Well, that’s not so hard to do. At Case there is an online registration system called SOLAR, which stands for “Shitty Old Lousy-Ass Registration” because it’s painful and buggy and laggy and usually doesn’t even work at all. But let’s pretend that it worked marvelously in my dream. All I had to do was log on (I was already at a computer) and sign up for all of my classes, and then I’d be set!

Except…I couldn’t log on. Every student needs to input a 4-character pin to log into the system, and even if I could remember my pin, it would do me no good because they’re changed every semester. Students have to meet or at least email their advisors in order to get their new pins, which I of course hadn’t done in my dream because I hadn’t bothered to try signing up for classes. This is where the nightmare ended—me, panic-stricken in the library, wondering how soon I’d be able to reach my advisor and get the pin, scared breathless that I’d end up skipping my first day of classes.

When I was little, the few nightmares I had usually involved either falling to my death from a great height or trying desperately to escape some very bad person bent on killing me. I also had less graphic nightmares wherein a common theme was my having to constantly struggle for sight or for breath or both. Those nightmares were cool and scary. But what is my greatest fear now? That I won’t know my SOLAR pin and find myself unable to register for classes? That, heaven forbid, I’ll have to cut the first day of lectures? Oh, the terror. I can’t believe that this crap is the scariest thing my brain can come up with. School should never, ever, be the subject of a nightmare!

I hope that I soon get a dream where I’m drowning in boiling lava or being chased through a maze by a rapier-wielding giant rock monster, or basically anything scary and exciting, because that last dream was pathetic.

.: posted by Boris 6:44 PM

Comments: Post a Comment