Two Nightmares about Teaching

1. The night before last: I was hanging out at a lunch table outside at some university campus. You know how geography smears into a weird bricolage of impressions of various places? So, yeah, I think it was a mixture of UB and UM, not that this is SO very important. Anyway, I'm at this table, probably doing research (because, what the hell else would I be doing?) and I suddenly have to leave right away. There's a younger guy sitting at the table as well, but I barely look at him. Anyway, I get up, gather my books, and leave right away. THEN I realize that, shit, I'm not wearing my glasses and I definitely had them at the table. I go back there, only to find a new group of students at the table. I ask them if they've seen my glasses, and they produce a pair that they found sitting on the table after the guy who was sharing it with me left. A light dawns and I suddenly know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this guy schemed in order to switch my glasses with his, which aren't even close to my prescription. I'm enraged, fuming, really, as angry as I can ever remember having been in my life. I know that new glasses right now (since I already used up my once a year free lenses and reduced fee schedule for frames) would cost me at least $300. I can't even think too clearly about that, though, because I'm so angry. Then, miraculously, campus police show up because they've apprehended the guilty party who is, indeed, wearing my comparatively quite stylish glasses. I'm so filled with rage that I start slapping him across the face repeatedly, calling him every bad thing I can think of, and it isn't doing anything to quell my anger. He just stares at me with this slight smile, totally unbothered. He's one of my students this semester.

2. Another miscellaneous college setting that, for some reason, I think is Illinois. I've never been there and perhaps that's why this dream is set there. It's a weird time. The sitting is being bombed by some enemy forces of some sort, and people keep assuring me that when they call in the leafblowers it will all be okay. A huge plane kind of collapses into the ground, killing everyone aboard, which was supposed to include me. But I'm teaching in this private high school, with the same students I have now. I'm trying to lecture about something, and one of my students keeps talking. I ask him once to stop, nicely, and then I slam my fist into the desk and tell him he needs to shut up while I'm talking. Everyone is completely horrified, the class ends, and the next teacher comes in. The offended student walks up to her, because she is my superior, and tells her (she's really one of C's past professors in AMS) that I struck him. The next thing I know, the school is considering firing me for hitting and student and I know that I'll never get another job if this happens. Meanwhile, people outside the university are freaking out about getting enough food, and these weird little gadgets that make polluted water drinkable. The funny thing is that I don't think I've ever even heard this particular student speak.


Everyone bored now?