Last night's dream

(Yeah, I know, it's a common bore-blogging trope to talk about your dreams. But sometimes I think mine reveal some kind of psychological insight to me and I like to remember them).

I don't know if last night's remembered dream was wish-fulfillment or if it was stress leaving my brain. I was in the classroom, teaching one of my classes. I had a student in my class (as is typical in my dreams, not a person that exists in my real life). He was sort of the stereotypical surfer dudebro - bleached blond hair, slightly muscled physique. He was wearing jeans shorts and a white sweatshirt with some kind of green faux-university logo on it (like the shirts places like Urban Outfitters sell to wannabe hipsters so they look 'smart' or like they've been somewhere cool).

Anyway. I was lecturing about cellular respiration to the class (a topic I taught in one of my classes this week). He started talking. Not whispering, not that little tiny snarky aside to a friend students sometimes do and which most faculty pretend not to see. But talking at conversational volume to the person next to him.

The young women behind him got pained looks on their faces and in my dream, I thought, "Tap him on the shoulder and tell him to shut his yap." (In real life, when a student tells another student that they are being annoying, it often "sticks" better than when **I** ask the student to stop doing whatever it is. Sad but true).

Well, they didn't. So I stopped, walked over to face him, and said, "Excuse me?"

He kept talking, totally ignoring me. I said, "Excuse me, you're annoying the people behind you with your talking."

Again he ignored me.

And then I did something I'd never have the guts to do in real life- I got in his face. I leaned over the desk, put my hands on the desk and got my face about six inches from his:

"Your. Talking. Is. Annoying. People. Be. Quiet. Now. Or. Leave. Class."

And he looked at me and said, "Sha. I'm a sports physiologist, I already know all this, I don't need to learn it." (In the narrative of the dream, I knew that he worked at one of those sports-injury-rehab places, but he was essentially a glorified go-fer: he washed towels and cleaned the sweat off the machines when someone was done using it and manned the phones).

"No," I said, "Even if you were, you still need to learn this. You got the lowest grade on the exam we took*"

(*in real life I would SO not be allowed to say this. It's actually technically violating Federal law to reveal a student's grade to another student without the first student's written permission)

And then he got up. And stormed out. But not before throwing a little plastic ring at me. (In the world of the dream, the little plastic ring was something you plugged into the computers - kind of like a verification key - that allowed access to all the class materials. So throwing away your key was kind of like dropping the mike as you stormed out of class.)

I woke up right after that. But yeah, I have one student who's a particular thorn in my side because of their attitude (they seem to think they don't need to learn the material, despite the fact that they're repeating the class and currently have a failing grade in their retake of it*)

(*And I don't get this, I guess this is how some folks operate so differently from I do. I'd be utterly humiliated if I failed a class (or even got a D, which is technically passing but which I don't really think of as passing) and if I were retaking it, I'd work my BUTT off to earn the best grade possible.)

I also have a few people who are just being followed around by Winnie-the-Pooh's little black storm cloud this semester - problem upon problem and it bleeds over into them needing extensions or missing class and then not understanding the material. And I have a few people who seem already to have given up.