Exam Anxiety Dream Strikes One Week Out From Stuvac, Student Confirms

Nicolette Petra

After realising that next week is the final learning week of semester, a student has reported her sleep has been interrupted by study-stress-induced dreams.

The student has spent the last two weeks binge-watching the past seven weeks worth of lectures for her four units of study and is yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“I’ve put the lectures on x2 speed to get through them faster, but sometimes the lecturers speak so quickly that I can’t keep up and have to backtrack meaning I’m not really halving my lecture time at all.”

The sudden switch from Netflix-binge to Canvas-cram has caused the student to realise she is grossly underprepared for the upcoming exam season. Like many, she has resorted once again to the old reliable ‘P’s get degrees’ adage, despite the fact that this was going to ‘be her year.’

Now, she’s hearing lecturers in her sleep and having nightmares where she misses her exams.

“In one dream, I missed an online exam that went from 12pm to 3pm. Then, I was texting friends later that night and they said the exam was being held from 12am to 3am! I got my notes out but I didn’t know anything anyway and I ended up missing the exam... again.”

Academic anxiety nightmares are common among students as well as adults, with many still suffering from what is colloquially known as ‘HSC PTSD.’

However, students are grateful that all lectures have been made accessible online this semester. In previous years, lecture recordings were frequently lost in the cloud, accidently not recorded, or worse, chosen not to be recorded by lecturers in a bid to ensure ‘attendance’ and ‘participation’ despite class clashes and illnesses being perfectly valid reasons to give students online access to lecture recordings.

Unfortunately, no amount of online accessibility or mounting HECS debt seems able to make students want to watch their lectures.

“If I had to choose between watching 56 hours worth of lectures or rewatching 63 and half hours of Game of Thrones, I think we all know which I’d pick. Even with the shitstorm that was the final season.”

Stuvac (student vacation) begins on 1 June.

More to come.