Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams?

Question: Does every professor have the tormented dream life I do? Or just everyone I know?

Answer: Ms. Mentor's generous correspondents have much to share on the dream front:

• "Before I gave my first lecture as a grad student, to 100 students, I dreamed that I walked to the podium, began arranging my notes, looked up, and saw half the class getting up to walk out. In my dream, the supervising professor was there and made them all come back and sit down -- but 30 seconds later, they did it again. (In real life, everything went fine, and everyone was there, except the professor.)"

• "My nightmare: I have to make up some high-school classes that I missed along the way, but at the same time I'm supposed to be teaching in that dreaded classroom full of students I haven't met yet and somehow can't quite get to because of the dream-paralysis state. And I'm naked in the hallway with nothing to cover me except a whole locker full of unread history books."

• "My beginning-of-year dream used to be that I had to deliver a keynote speech, without notes or a clear idea of the topic, to an audience that included the vice chancellor. But now every year before Christmas, I dream I've forgotten to buy presents for my children. I wonder if this is normal."

• "No academic dreams have ever come close to the anxiety level of the nightmares I used to have when I was a waitress."

• "Now, as an administrator, I dream about being a travel tour guide, and everything imaginable goes wrong. We're on the wrong side of the train tracks; we're on the wrong side of the freeway; we get to the hotel, and no one's there. Over and over, I'm leading people astray."

• "I dreamed that 'they' barged into my house and demanded that I return my Ph.D., my M.A., my B.A., and my high-school diploma. They were about to tear up my elementary-school certificate when I woke up, moaning."

And so members of Ms. Mentor's flock, it seems, have similar psychic lives. They fear being humiliated, ignored, naked, unprepared for class.

But being highly verbal people, they also enjoy sharing their fears, and laughing and shuddering at other people's worries. It starts when they are undergraduates.

In a 2002 article on academic nightmares published in the Harvard Crimson, a student described a dream in which she turned in a political-development paper to her professor in a burning building. Her paper caught fire, and the professor said, "Well, I can't read it now, can I?" Another student dreamed that her music midterm-exam packet had blank pages where the questions were supposed to be, and so she couldn't take the exam. Then there was the Harvard economics student who, the night before her final, dreamed she was being chased by Elmer Fudd. "When he finally caught up with me," she told the Crimson, "he shot me!" When she awoke, her first thought was, "Hey, I've been shot! I don't have to take the ec exam now!"

There are academics who never get over the stage fright -- who have to quit teaching because they can't stand having to perform before hordes of students. One reader suggests that academics never get over the feeling of being a fraud because "none of us are convinced that we are good enough." She imagines another nightmare scenario: "Put 6 to 12 scholars who cover their own feelings of inadequacy with braggadocio together in a room for two hours . . ."

But not everything ruffles the slumbers of scholars. Ms. Mentor has never heard anyone report this nightmare: You're supposed to go to Stockholm to pick up your Nobel Prize, and you somehow can't get to the airport. Perhaps Nobel Prize winners hire underlings -- graduate students? -- to have their anxiety dreams for them.

Other than the occasional administrative nightmare, Ms. Mentor's readers do not report anxiety dreams about any aspect of their work lives except teaching. No one mentions nightmares about research -- though certainly the loss of grant money has been the ruin of many a poor scientist. If philosophers or political scientists or philologists dream of theories gone awry, they don't confide those dreams to Ms. Mentor.

Nor does anyone seem to have an anxiety dream about trying, trying, trying to get to a committee meeting and somehow failing.

Only teaching evokes that primal fear of embarrassment, of failure, that dogs good students everywhere. If your published articles aren't much good, only a few specialists will know. If you don't attend a committee or department meeting, most people will little note nor long remember whether you were there.

But when you're teaching, everyone sees you. They snicker at your shallow mind and your absurd body; they sniffle, sneeze, and snooze; and they can't wait to give you horrendous evaluations.

And acting nervous is contagious. Midway through writing this column, Ms. Mentor lay down for a nap -- only to discover that she was late for a job she didn't know she had, as a waitress at the Harvard Faculty Club. She tried to run, her legs wouldn't move, the doors wouldn't open, and panting behind her, ever gaining, was Elmer Fudd.

He was, of course, the head of her tenure committee.

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Question: I've been offered both a Fulbright and a tenure-track job, and I'd like to ask the hiring university to hold my job for a year, so that I can do the Fulbright first and be an even more valuable colleague. Would this be seen as: (A) a sign that I'm a witless coward who fears to make a serious life choice and am therefore unworthy of anything, or (B) a good compromise that will make me seem golden, wise, and worthy of a lot bigger salary than the insulting pittance I've been offered?

Answer: (B).

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Sage Readers: In her never-ending quest for insights into the academic psyche, Ms. Mentor invites further reflections on dreams, as well as fears, hopes, rumors, trashings, meddlings, and the usual. She would like to know if the psychic quirks of academicians change with age. All communications are confidential, and identifying details and syndromes will be camouflaged.

Ms. Mentor can rarely answer letters personally, but most eventually find their way into her columns or books. She directs interested readers to other columns on this site, to the Chronicle's fora, and to her first book, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. Her second tome will be appearing in the fall.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her e-mail address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com. To read her previous columns, click here.

Copyright © Emily Toth. All rights reserved.