Anticipation Dreams

There are two nights each year through which I'm consistently unable to sleep peacefully: Christmas Eve and the night before the first day of school. 

The night before Christmas morning is a predictable one, right?  Especially for a little kid.  Buzzing with the anticipation of opening my presents the following morning, I'd have four to five dreams before morning finally came.  One year -- maybe when I was in fourth grade? -- each dream set forth a number of quests that needed to be completed before I could open my presents, each task more convoluted and labyrinthine than the last, until finally I would get to my presents, rip open the first one --

and wake up.

This happened at least five times during that night.  By the time I actually got to open my presents the next day, I was pretty sure that I was still dreaming.  My delight at receiving that first present was so coupled with the shock that I'd actually gotten to open a present that I don't think I even registered what that present was.

As I've grown older, my Christmas dreams have calmed down a bit (though I still have trouble falling asleep).  While opening presents is still exciting, my anticipation now is mostly for the rituals that surround my family:  gathering around the tree in our pajamas, watching everyone's faces as they open their presents, Herman Van Veen on the stereo, a big breakfast with sausage links and my mother's scrambled eggs, and the peaceful lethargy that reigns after we've all eaten ourselves into comas. 

My back-to-school dreams, however, have only intensified with age.  The night before my ninth grade year, I dreamt again and again that I couldn't find my way around the school.  Even though I'd been wandering the halls of OHS since I could walk (a side-effect of having a high school teacher for a father), all of a sudden my dream-self couldn't seem to remember where the math rooms were.  In one dream, I'd encounter a circus that had been erected in the hall by the library and need to navigate my way through the bear pit.  In another, I'd simply be the only student who'd forgotten to get her schedule.  In each, I'd come into the school with a sense of security, only to be thrown off my axis.  I'd try desperately to overcome each obstacle, to find my classes, and when all seemed that it might be lost --

I'd wake up.

The school dreams quieted in college and faded completely when I worked at the bookstore, but on the night before my first year of teaching, they sidled back into my subconscious, growing worse each year.  They still follow the same theme as my earlier school dreams -- the main conflict remains that I can't find my classrooms, although now it's as a teacher rather than a student -- while seeming to get more creative every year.  Before a particularly intimidating school year, I spent the night dreaming that the principal had a) moved my classroom out into our "portable" classrooms and b) demolished the portables to make way for a carnival.  When dream-me asked her where I was supposed to teach, she told me to make it work.

(Note:  Yes, I realize that circuses and carnivals are similar.  No, I'm not sure what it means.  If anything.)

Other teaching anxieties make their way in, as well, and the dreams now begin about a month before the first day of school.  Now I dream about walking in to my classroom (once I've finally found it) without a lesson plan, assuming I can just wing it -- but my students don't listen to me, and my voice is alternating between a nagging, nasally shriek and a weird, slow molasses-y twang that impresses no one, and my evaluator has just arrived, and all of a sudden there are paper airplanes everywhere!

I could go on about the many variations on my school dream theme, but honestly, I'm freaking myself out a little just doing it, and you get the picture.  Anyway, all that is not why I'm writing this.

The point is this:  I always thought of my Christmas dreams as anticipatory dreams ("I'm so excited about something that's about to happen!") and my school dreams as anxiety dreams ("I'm so nervous about this!"), but I think now that's not quite right.  After all, Christmas morning is the culmination of an entire season of anticipation.  It's an ending.  Behind the giddiness of my child-self lurked always the dread of the anticipation coming to an end, and my subconscious spoke to that by waking me up right before that was about to happen -- every damn time.  The day after Christmas felt dull and gray back then.  Lifeless.

The night before the first day of school, however, is where you quiver on the cusp of something that is about to be born: the new academic year.  And so under all the nerves and all the anxiety, there's anticipation lurking inside me.  I'm aware that what I'm about to say is probably an indication of some serious mental health issues (and I'm only a little bit kidding about that), but: summer is wonderful and necessary, but in some ways it's really just about hibernating, incubating, soaking up nutrients and sleep and books and TV and sun and ease until I can wake up and do what I'm really here for, which is this job with these kids.  Teaching high school students is a job that is ridiculous, exhausting, exhilarating, depressing, entertaining, maddening, creatively demanding and never, ever boring.

And I'm so excited.  I've spent this last week preparing in a manner befitting a training montage from an 80s movie.  I've stuffed every lesson plan so full that they groan under the weight of activities, I double-checked my copies and my supplies, and I've pored over my class lists at least six times tonight, wondering who these young people are that will be coming into my life tomorrow.

And oh, I am nervous.  I'm always nervous.  I know what I'm teaching tomorrow, and the next day, but don't even ask me about next week.  I have plans, supposedly, but that's assuming I'll be able to find my classroom.  Classrooms.

Which I totally will be able to do.  Probably.

My subconscious must examine the possibilities, aware my excitement, and give me all the worst case scenarios:  missing classrooms, recalcitrant students, ill-prepared plans, inconveniently-placed carnivals.  But just as during my Christmas dreams, I'm allowed to wake up when everything hurtles towards catastrophe, and I realize that the dream isn't the truth, that it's going to be okay.  But also, that I will be thrown off my axis this year -- it's inevitable in all teaching -- and that's okay, too.

So I know -- I know -- that there will be times during this year when I am sad and frustrated and angry at myself and my students.  I know this.  I am nervous.

(Nerves aren't necessarily a bad sign, though.  As one of my first teaching mentors once told me, "If you're not nervous, you're not putting anything out there.")

But mostly, I'm thrumming with anticipation.  My father emailed me yesterday, wishing me luck on the first day of school and adding, "Open those boxes full of students with relish -- like Christmas."

 I guess it runs in the family.