Get it? Not sleep walking but sleep teaching …
I have often had the experience of laying awake in the middle of the night, thinking about the next day’s classes or obsessively replaying the previous day’s classes.
Lately, I’ve taken this behavior to a whole new level. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night realizing that I’ve been teaching in my sleep. My brain has been, on some level, engaged in lecturing my students or conducting discussion. When I’m “sleep teaching,” I’m actually asleep but I am nonetheless teaching away, my brain running like a spinning top.
It’s not that my classes are going badly or anything. But for some reason I cannot shut my brain off at night and what it’s glomming onto is teaching.
Stress is getting the better of me this semester, no doubt about it. But, boy, have I had some great, imaginary, dream classes! In my sleep, I’m witty, smart, focused, and knowledgeable. My dream students are getting a top-rate education. Unfortunately, my actual students are getting my tired ass, dragged into class after a poor night’s sleep. Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?
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March 7, 2009 at 8:45 pm
maude lebowski
about two months into the office job i have now, i started to process insurance stuff in my sleep. i would spend all night dreaming that i was at work processing terminations, enrolling people onto their policies, and doing salary changes, and then when i’d wake up i’d be exhausted because it was like i worked two shifts in one day. it eventually stopped because i think my brain realized that it needed an escape from work, not more of it.
March 7, 2009 at 11:03 pm
undine
If only you could switch them–dream self could teach the real students and vice versa.
March 10, 2009 at 1:59 am
Ink
This happens to me as well…you articulated it so well! ( I have also experienced sleep writing phases, too…have you? Sometimes I’ve even “awoken” to find myself rewriting something that I’ve already turned in for a deadline. Sigh.)
March 16, 2009 at 12:16 am
JaneB
This happens to me, too… sometimes I even continue to believe that I DID teach the class, and go into my real class with the next materials, only to realise that no, I still have to teach the class I ‘dream taught’. I actually prefer teaching dreams to pure anxiety dreams, where I’m late and looking for something vital that I can’t quite remember or trying to get through a crowd of people all moving in the other direction…