The Nutty Professor

I dreamed that I was taking a class, and the professor turned out to be the head of the hospital where I work, a male psychiatrist, Dr. N. Prior to him being the professor, we had a female professor who was nice and a good teacher but wasn’t all that strict. I had been enjoying the class with her. However, when Dr. N came to teach, everything was different. He asked if any of us had done the reading for the class, and none of us had. He became increasingly irate as he surveyed the class seeing that none of us were raising our hands to indicate that we had done the reading for today. I felt so upset with myself because I have always liked to please teachers, and I could have easily done the reading. I hadn’t because I was used to the woman running the class, and she would engage us in discussions and wasn’t as strict about the readings if we weren’t interested in them. Dr. N started yelling at us that we were terrible people because we had not done the reading. This was his first day teaching us, so it was rather shocking. I wished so much that I could go back in time and do the reading and be the only student who did the reading. That way everyone else would be hated by him but I would be his angel. However, he was new, and I hadn’t had a chance to “read” him, so his expectations, particularly for a first day of teaching, caught me off guard. He called one of the students a “pinhead.” After the class, I decided that I should probably switch to another class because obviously this professor was sadistic. However, I was somewhat ambivalent. I could work very hard to please him and likely do well. Certainly I was skilled at being the student who could stand out as being the best by putting all my time into a class. It was also a hassle to try to switch classes. I also wondered if I was being too particular by switching classes. My gut instinct was to switch classes immediately. In the dream the conflict was never resolved.