Psychology Department -> Undergraduate Office ->
The University of Texas Psychology Department
Graduation Ceremony
Commencement Address
May 2003
Dr. Theresa A. Sullivan
Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
The University of Texas System
Dr. Domjan, esteemed colleagues in psychology, parents, families, and friends, and especially graduates of the Class of 2003:
Congratulations are due for everyone on this milestone. You parents, spouses, siblings, and friends provided the support, financial and emotional, to make this day possible. The faculty did their job; evidently Psychology 418 was hard enough, but not too hard, to bring you students here today. And finally, you graduates did your job of learning – even with the considerable distractions of life on the nation’s largest single campus. This day probably fulfills a dream for many people here in this auditorium.
It is actually about dreams that I wish to speak today – not aspirations for achievement, but those actual . . . visitations of the night. Here’s a dream that some of you might have had: it’s time for an examination. You are sitting at your desk, but something is wrong. The examination sheet is written in Chinese. Or your test is blank. Or your mind is blank. You have only picked up your pencil, and already you are out of time. Or the pencil breaks. Or your pen is writing only with invisible ink.
This dream has other forms too. Sometimes you can’t find the exam room. Sometimes you realize that it is time for the exam but you forgot to attend the course! In fact, you intended to drop that course, but somehow never got around to it. And the course will never be anything that you could pick up in a night of cramming – no, it will be a course in advanced differential equations. This version of the dream was featured prominently in Eyebeam, the cartoon strip created by Sam Hurt, former cartoonist of the Daily Texan.
Graduate students are not immune from this dream. The graduate student version of the dream often centers on the final oral examination – but the student doesn’t recognize any of the faculty examiners, or they all speak unknown languages, or the material is completely new. The student is unprepared and deeply embarrassed. New physicians preparing for their board examinations report having their version of The Dream.
There is even a teacher’s form of this dream. The dreaming teacher cannot find the classroom for the first day of class, or she cannot remember what the course is supposed to be about, or -- even worse – he had intended to spend a lot of time preparing for this course and forgot to do it. In my own version of this dream, the classroom is full of bright, eager physics graduate students, and I have stupidly and unaccountably signed up to teach ?Recent developments in quantum mechanics with applications to chaos theory.?
This dream, with its variants, is extremely common. It is called the Examination Dream, and in our society it is among the five most common recurring dreams. Although children don’t appear to have this dream often, it begins to appear in adolescence and people as old as 75 report having the dream. One study showed that 39% of students enrolled in college had had this dream.
But here’s the good news: almost 100% of college graduates report having this dream!
Congratulations again, graduates!
Why is this good news, you might ask? After all, people who have the Examination Dream often awaken in a cold sweat, breathing heavily and feeling their heart pounding . . . not most people’s version of good news.
It’s the interpretation of this dream that might convince you that it is good news. Students who have really failed major examinations are much less likely to have this dream than students who were actually successful. There’s a hint here that the examination, even if it is terrifying at the time, is symbolic of your previous success. You have faced a lot of examinations and for the most part you succeeded. That’s why you’re here today, dressed up in garb from fourteenth century European universities.
The Dream often recurs when you are anxious about something new in your life, such as a coming job interview. This may actually be a subtle reminder that you have previously faced serious tests in your life and you have succeeded. Robert Van De Castle, the former director of the Sleep and Dream Laboratory at the University of Virginia Medical School, says of the Examination Dream: ?Because dreams are so rich in terms of metaphor, we really can’t come up with a better metaphor for how we measure up. . . . It’s still a question of who gets A’s vs. who gets B’s, C’s and so forth.? Although scary at the time you have it, the Examination Dream is a reminder that your talent has brought you this far, and chances are good that future success is also within your grasp.
And realistically, you will face important tests in the future. Some of these tests will be personal as you seek your begin and develop your career. Your family responsibilities, whatever they are today, will increase in the future. Some of the tests you face will be societal and economic, as we face fears of recession and terrorism in our current decade, and no doubt different fears in future decades. The meaning of The Dream, however, is that you are capable and you can handle it, even if you feel afraid and even if you feel you’ve already faced enough challenges, thank you very much.
So enjoy today’s celebration and revel in seeing the Tower lighted orange tonight in your honor. Rejoice with your families and friends, make arrangements to stay in touch with your classmates and roommates, and remember us here at UT. The State of Texas has made a substantial investment in your education, but I believe that the taxpayers’ confidence in you will be abundantly repaid.
I think it is customary for commencement speakers to wish that all your dreams come true. Given my topic, that sentiment is perhaps not appropriate. Instead, and perhaps Sigmund Freud would approve, I hope that your wishes will be fulfilled!
1. Clint O’Connor, ?Flunking in Your Dreams: Familiar Plight for Many,? Plain Dealer (May 31, 1998), p. 1J.
2. See James A. Hall, Clinical Uses of Dreams: Jungian Interpretations and Enactments (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1977), pp. 188-189.
3. Robert Van de Castle says that the examination dream is one of the five most common dreams. Quoted by Clint O’Connor, “To Sleep, Perchance to . . . Fail? Dreams that Take Us Back to School,” Times-Picayune (July 12, 1998), p. E5. [Henceforth O’Connor.] A study in Montreal also shows that failing tests was a common dream of college students in 1958 and remains so now.
4. O’Connor, op. cit.
5. In a study comparing dreams of college students with those of psychiatric patients, 38.8% of college students had a dream about failing an examination. Calvin S. Hall and Robert L. Van de Castle, The Content Analysis of Dreams (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966), pp. 236-237, Table 15-29 (quoting from C.H. Ward, A.T. Beck, and E. Rascoe, “Typical Dreams: Incidence among Psychiatric Patients,” Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 1961, 606-615). A study in Montreal also shows that failing tests was a common dream of college students in 1958 and remains so now. Richard Saltus, “Dreams Full of Dread: Mind and Body,” The Boston Globe (March 30, 1997), p. 7, quoting Tore E. Nelsen of the Deam and Nightmare Laboratory at the University of Montreal.
6. Students report more dreams in the week before mid-term exams, compared with a week with no exams. Theresa Duke and John Davidson, “Ordinary and Recurrent Dream Recall of Active, Past, and Non-Recurrent Dreamers During and After Academic Stress,” Dreaming 12, 4 (December 2002), pp. 185-197.
7. O’Connor, op. cit., quoting Robert Van De Castle.
8. Brian Burnes, “Back-in-School Dreams Haunt Adults,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (April 1, 1989), p. 3D, quoting Rosalind Cartwright, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. More generally, dreams may offer an opportunity to review counterfactuals. Patrick McNamara, “Counterfactual Thought in Dreams,” Dreaming 10,4 (2000), pp. 237-246. For the successful student, failing is the counterfactual. Another interpretation is that the examination dream represents a test of sexual maturity. David Foulkes, A Grammar of Dreams (New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 57.
9. Some evidence indicates that recurrent dreams are associated with stressful life events. Bruce Bower, ?Recurrent Dreams: Clues to Conflict, Study by Ronald J. Brown and Donald C. Donderi,? Science News v. 129 (March 29, 1986), p. 197.
