A Math Teacher Who Knows No Math

Dream Journal
#1

I am just starting to record my dreams again after many years (45?) of not recording them.

In the dream I am at a university and I am supposed to be teaching a math class. I know I am not a math teacher so I am a little nervous about it. The students, all young adults are gathering and looking to me to decide where we will be having class. We try a couple of rooms but they are not suitable for a variety of reasons. There is construction going on and some rooms are incomplete. Finally we settle in a kind of hallway. There is big blackboard and a student goes up to it and starts writing equations - very fast! I don’t know anything about what he is writing. Another student goes to the board and writes equations as if in response to the first. I am in way over my head. Finally the students realize I am not a math teacher and start to leave. Some of them are kind of smirking. I don’t feel quite as uncomfortable as I think I normally would - or should.

5 Likes
#2

thanks for sharing @evelyn.mckelvie.

Are you a teacher in the real world?

2 Likes
#3

I was a music teacher years ago. However I worked in universities for many years and I think the connection is more related to that.

2 Likes
#4

If that were my dream, there’s something about the university (higher learning) being under construction, and the fact that I am still making decisions about where to teach. The hallway feels like a transitional state rather than an ultimate destination, a bit of a bardo, so much in flux. In my view, math can come from the somewhat narrow perspective of the left brain which, as a creative person who is fond of the imaginal realms, is not my forte. If I were at the beginning of rekindling my dream practice, it’s not the part of me that would feel the most useful. The sneering students feel like self judgment introjected from society’s preference for a more linear way of doing things, and not being that bothered by their opinion speaks to my age (I’m 65 in waking life), to knowing my strengths and the benefits of all my practices. I don’t have as strong a need to fit in as I did when I was the students’ age, and their recognizing that I am not a math teacher and walking out feels like a relief. (Let them go be certain of themselves and enjoy it while it lasts.) Thanks for sharing, and again, everything I’ve said is from the perspective of imagining that this were my dream. Not trying to interpret anything for you.

1 Like
#5

Thank you for your thoughts. Very much like mine. I am 72 so have a similar relationship to judgments -especially from younger ones. Math is not my forte either but I do have some facility with it. I am ambidextrous and have always wished I was more comfortable with math and calculus.

The dream was very much filled with the sense of a bardo - as you said everything in flux.

1 Like