Nightmares

[jordy]

I've had 3 nightmares in the past month in which the admissions committee at my favorite program is tearing my application apart and were insulted that I applied there because I suck that much.

[melusine]

I just had a dream about having to go back to high school while my boyfriend got accepted to his program in NY.

It was not any random high school either, but *my* high school. I was being chased down the hall by the guys that used to bully me.. They had poured ketchup over my jacket and their girlfriends tried to lock me in the bathroom. I woke up just as one of the biggest guys was about to beat me up and I was desperately dialling for my boyfriend to somehow come and save me over the phone...

[Tall Chai Latte]

i had a strange dream last night, where i was invited to interview at a middle earth-looking place with a lot of trees around. everyone did their research in tree houses....

[moralresearcher]

Man imagine if it was like project runway! And instead of designing a dress, you had a write a paper that you could conference. And instead of a mock runway with three judges, there was a mock dais with three judges... and instead of taking you to the fabric store and saying "You have twenty minutes, get all the materials you need", they took you to the library! And instead of a sewing room, you worked in a windowless computer lab! And the catchphrase instead of like "Auf wiedersehen" was, "I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a position this year. Best of luck in all your future endeavors." Every challenge you win, you earn a little bit of research money. And the semi-finalists got into a masters program or something! That show would be so boring, except for all the crying and backbiting.

"Omigod, Michael totally checked out the book I needed to sabotage me. What a total b*tch!!" "Sarah doesn't even know how to write proper MLA citations... why is she even here?" "Yeah I think Frederico will make an excellent teacher someday... in high school (hissy sound)." "(Crying) This research assignment requires quantitative methods... but in my field we only use qualitative methods, this just this is just so not fair. (More sobbing. This person is eliminated)."

I laughed out loud at this description. LOVE IT!!!

[BCHistory]

I had my first grad school dream two days ago:

Two friends and I were walking around my undergrad campus. I stepped into the commons room of a freshmen dorm and ran into one of my LOR writers. [in real life, this professor was quite enthusiastic about my decision to apply to grad school and gladly wrote letters for me.] We sat down for a chat, and he proceeded to interrogate me on my reasons for applying. I answered the questions well, and then he insisted that I walk with him to his office. Before we entered the building, he spun around and began berating me for applying to grad school. He was ranting incoherently and shaking his fist in my face. He stormed into the building, and I began laughing.

And that was the end of my dream.

Edited January 18, 2010 by BCEmory08

[George]

I just dreamed that I had to retake the GRE, but I couldn't figure out if I have to retake the general test or the subject test or why I needed to do it in the first place. I was mortified by the possibility of sitting in a chair for 4 hours another time.

[genotype]

I had a dream about a week ago that I received a letter from U of Connecticut's BiomedSci PhD program saying "REJECTED, and you have to pay for your own flight to get here to get personally rejected, TO YOUR FACE" or something ridiculous.

and then YESTERDAY, I checked my email, and lo and behold! an interview! but I DO have to pay for the flights..but I will get reimbursed eventually.

So I guess HALF of that dream was true?

I'm glad it was the positive half that was true . Congrats on your interview!

[Deleted]

I just dreamt of an across the board rejection. I had received 11 envelopes (for my 11 applications) and as I opened them one by one, they turned out to be rejections. I woke up after opening the last one thinking for a moment that it was real. My heart was pounding.

[red_crayons]

I keep dreaming that I get in, which makes me feel like my brain is mocking me. Rejection will be SO much worse after all these visions of acceptance.

[DeWinter]

I've had 3 nightmares in the past month in which the admissions committee at my favorite program is tearing my application apart and were insulted that I applied there because I suck that much.

Wow, I've had the same dream! Except they sent me a letter proclaiming that they thought it was insulting that I applied there.

[qazwerty]

I dreamt about checking these forums.

[melusine]

I dreamed I checked the results page and all my schools posted their acceptances and said that anyone who hadn't heard was a reject, and I hadn't heard anything. And then I woke up and didn't die.

[Katzenmusik]

In my nightmare I went to visit a professor whose specialty was studying the old maritime world. He kindly invited me to join him for a cup of coffee. I remembered, as I sat down, that the fish-print shirt I was wearing had been designed by the professor. I felt sooooooooo overwhelmingly embarrassed that I had chosen to wear this shirt from his fashion line, because he would think I was wearing it just to get on his good side.

I woke up in a frantic state, then realized I knew of no such fish-shirt-designing professor!

[Confused Goose]

I've been lurking around this thread for a few days now. Just last night, I dreamt that my SoP was littered with expletives...and I am thinking - How the heck did that happen? I don't even use expletives in everyday speak. Did someone play a prank on me? How can I have not checked before submitting...yada yada yada...Then I woke up

[TMP]

I've had some dreams...

Another one. I was visiting one of my top choices after getting accepted. So it was just me. The potential advisor was pretty cool like everyone said except I sorta looked at him and thought, "You know, you don't really look like your picture on the department page, have you lost some hair since?" He almost sort of looked like my 6th grade social studies teacher. We went for drinks with another grad student of his. Then the grad student took me on a "tour" of the town which was... unimpressive, like something out of Cormac's The Road, not much of a college town but more like something you'd find driving through rural areas of California or in the West (and this school was in Midwest!).

Bizarre.

[Lantern]

I'm a pretty active dreamer, so I'm surprised it took me this long to have/remember a grad school nightmare. Last night I dreamt that I was already attending one of the schools I applied to. I had been attending for five days when a bunch of students sitting around me started discussing what was going to be on the first exam. Suddenly I realized I had not even registered for any classes! So now I had already missed the first week of classes, and somehow I had not even met my advisor yet! I was mortified, and was trying to bring myself to go to see him to admit to him that I had completely forgotten to register for classes. Somehow that led to me being locked into a glass-enclosed area from which I couldn't escape!

[heelandcoo88]

Just for everyone’s amusement, here’s the dream I had last night…

I was at MIT for an interview weekend (a dream in itself, really), and instead of interviewing the candidates, they had us take an exam. Everyone was working away, when I suddenly realized that I only had a blank piece of paper. They hurriedly gave me the correct exam, but I was already way behind everyone else. I started working on the first section, titled “Verbal,” but soon moved on to “Math and Science” when the person next to me whispered that no one cared about the verbal section. I breezed through the first couple of questions in the math/science section, as they were the exact same problems I’m currently reviewing for the FE exam. But then the questions started getting weird and nonsensical. Everyone was getting up to turn in their exam, and I still had most of it to finish. One of the questions asked us to set up a PCR reaction. I was like, “OK, no big deal.” But the reagents were unlabeled except for a cryptic mark, and in order to figure out which ones to add, we had to logic-out a murder mystery. And you had to use the correct pipette for each reagent, also cryptically labeled and weighed down so that it was difficult to lift. I finally broke down crying because all the other candidates were talking and laughing about how easy it all was while I was trying to concentrate. I eventually snapped at them to shut up, and then they all gave me the evil eye. When everyone else had left, the admissions officer finally came to kick me out of the room and to tell me, “Sorry, you’re just not ready for this.”

And then I woke up. Ahhhhh...

[repatriate]

I finally had an admissions dream last night. I was flying to Chicago for an interview and left my carry-on bag on my connecting flight. It wasn't too big a deal because it just had some extra clothes and toiletries, things I could replace if I needed to. I had to rent a car to get to the school in Springfield. (Why Springfield? I have no idea; I didn't apply to any schools there.)

The next thing I recall in the dream is being in some part of rural Illinois, walking up a small dirt road to a general store. I was wearing only a t-shirt (that I kept having to tug down) and two mis-matched tall, clunky heels. I found a group of teenagers and asked to use their phones because I left my luggage on the plane and just needed to call my husband to get my credit card numbers so I could buy some clothes and rent a car to go to my interview at the University of Chicago. (Why Chicago? Why was I going to Springfield? I don't know!) They all just stared at me and ignored me, so I went to the counter of the general store and asked to use the phone, but the manager wasn't going to let me make a long distance call.

I went back out the teenagers and pleaded with them. They all said they had pay-as-you-go plans and didn't want me to use their credit. Finally, one girl took pity on me and offered to let me use her phone, but when she discovered it was a long distance call, she changed her mind. Then, one of the boys offered to let me use his phone and gave me this really weird, multi-part device that had a keypad on it I couldn't decipher. The numbers were not all on the same keypad and there were more than one of some numbers. When I would press the numbers, sometimes a different number would appear on the screen, and which number appeared kept changing. As I used it, the device got more and more complicated, with multiple keypads and some odd, heavy disc part. After playing with it for 10 minutes to the obviously great amusement of the teenagers (and with no help from them despite pleas), I realized that I was using some kind of fancy kitchen scale and not a phone.

There were a few more attempts to get help from others, who mostly ignored me because I seemed pretty crazy in my t-shirt and heels claiming I'd just gotten off a plane and needed to call my husband. I woke up from the dream scared that I would never be able to reach my husband and live out my days as a hobo in Illinois.

[red_crayons]

I had yet ANOTHER dream about getting in. These dreams are mocking, torturous constructs of my secretly inflated sense of self worth, and I hate them.

I came to dream-campus (I have dream versions of all kinds of familiar places - dream campus is a version of the place where I work, and it just appeared in the last 6 months) with my little sister. I was in one of the older buildings, and I met up with someone in the department I applied to. He told me that admissions decisions would be out soon, and that I could just wait in his office until they came to their formal decision. I sat in his office using - and I remember this specifically - his brand new, 17-inch Toshiba laptop, reading this forum. My sister got bored and left to go to a party.

As I waited, a couple other candidates, who seemed to know this professor well, also came in to wait. We were all waiting. They were talking to each other, I was on the computer still.

I left, thinking that I was going to be late to work. I turned back halfway across the quad, to just go double check. The committee had almost come to their decision. I accidentally went into their meeting room, and the chair - a very made up, middle aged woman with bleach blond hair - gave me a speech about how great I was and how they couldn't wait to have me. Other candidates came in, and they all got a pep talk, too. We were all accepted.

But I knew it was a dream the whole time, so instead of making me feel good, I just woke up annoyed that I DON'T actually have a decision yet, and I couldn't go back to sleep.

[mitzydoodle]

I love this thread!

I've had tons of dreams about admissions decisions. About a month back, they were all very positive- my would-be advisor called, praised me to the heavens, and told me I was in. Sometimes the conversations were in foreign languages, such as German--which I do not speak in non-dream life.

Now, as we are getting closer to decisions, the dreams have taken a turn. Two nights ago, I dreamed I got an email from a would-be advisor. A very long email, which stated my thesis (which I used as my writing sample) was FUNDAMENTALLY wrong, and that I needed to take some math courses to fix it (I'm an art historian!). He then went on to berate me for applying--in real life I did meet him before the due date-- and he referenced this meeting and told me that he couldn't believe I had acted like I was intelligent and that I would be able to function in his program. As if it weren't already clear, the email closed with "you are rejected."

I was pretty upset in the dream, and somehow ended up looking into my bathtub. It was filled with water, and my clothes were in it. I opened the drain to let the water out- and my clothes went right down the drain- this is really impossible in real life. I pulled my clothes out, and they went down again! So I pulled them out again, and that was when I woke up. I don't mean to sound cheesey, but I really hope this doesn't signify that my chances of acceptance have gone down the drain in the past few weeks!

[Piwi]

Back in mid-January I had this dream where I was accepted to Harvard's Biostat program. I don't remember much, just that I opened an email and it said I was accepted. Naturally I screamed, jumped up and down, and hugged my friends!

It was such a happy dream that when I woke up the next morning, I thought "Wouldn't that be something if I got an email from them?" I quickly checked my email, but nothing was there

That day I was traveling to another school for an interview, so tried not to think about it. After dinner with graduate students at this other school, I checked my email to find that Harvard had invited me for an interview the following weekend!! It's not quite the acceptance that I had dreamed about, but that could still be around the corner

A few weeks later I had a dream where I was accepted into another school. I got so excited, remembering what happened the last time I'd had an acceptance dream, that I woke myself up! I was very excited, but told myself that no program was going to email me in the middle of the night. I went back to sleep and had another dream. In this dream I still remembered my previous acceptance dream. (In the dream) I woke up and checked my email - nothing was there. All day (in the dream) I checked my email, always expecting that invitation email. (In the dream) It never came and I decided that my first fortune telling dream had been a coincidence. Well, (in real life) I woke up the next morning much less excited, and sure enough, there was no email that day from this other school.

At this point I'm not sure if my dreams are psychic or not. But if they are, then I hope I have lots of happy dreams in the next couple weeks!

[Smaudge]

Everyone's dreams here are so coherent! Mine are always little snippets and random events.

Last night I dreamt that I got an email from one of my LORs. The headline was "[Dream School] Admit Decisions...". Somehow she had received my admissions decision ahead of me, and was letting me know that I was put on the waiting list for my top program. I was pretty excited until I noticed that I had somehow applied for a program that existed in Paris--In other words, it was an American school, but I had somehow accidentally applied to live/work on their French campus.

I decided to go for a visit. When I got there, I saw that their Parisian campus consisted of a worn-down apartment building with no airconditioning, and there were only four students. My LOR was guest lecturing there, and she got all excited that I was considering the program. I felt guilty about turning it down, but I was hating the entire set up. I then remember having a telephone conversation with my husband, and being confused that I was trying to convince him that we could "make it work" with a cross-continental marriage. Then I started crying because that was not how I wanted my graduate career to be.

Weird dream.

[BlueSwedeShoes]

Last night I dreamt that I had to run the dishwasher. The problem was I could not decide if I should put it on the ANOVA-mode, else I wouldn't be able to separate knives and forks afterwards, or Correlation-mode, else I wouldn't be able to match the knives and forks together in pairs. But to unload the dishwasher later, I knew I had to both separate the cutlery and match it! It was quite stressful...until I woke up.

I think it was influenced by too much experimental design during the day and the fact that I've just moved to a new apartment without a dishwasher