Fear of Failing

I keep having this recurrent nightmare in slightly different versions, and have for years and years:

 

I am going to sit an exam. I get up early in the morning, plenty of time to get to the examination hall in time. I need some milk for my breakfast and go to the shop in the next street to get some. I start walking back to my house. I take a shortcut through an alleyway. I recognise the tall building near my home, but the street I get out into do not look familiar. I walk and walk. Some features of the cityscape seem familiar, others not at all.

 

I run into one of my fellow students. She holds a book. "Did you study this well?", she asks, "I've been told that all this questions will be from the Chapter 5 in it". I look at the book in panic. I remember buying it and putting it in the shelf, but then forgetting all about it and never reading it. She laughs deridingly, and I realise that it is my former boss from years ago.

 

I keep on walking the streets, now realising that I just have to turn the corner to be home, only to discover that in fact I have to walk round a whole block to get there. The railway barrier is down and I wait and wait.

 

I suddenly realise that there is a series of lectures I should have followed but never managed to attend, however much I tried. I always arrived late for some obscure reason, or went to the wrong lecture hall.

 

I go in a front door of a house and get out the back door, thinking that I am in my own street, only to discover that I am in a completely unknown street. I discover the Amsterdam Central Station in the far and the Eiffel Tower in the background.

 

Finally I make it to the examination hall. A little late. Everybody look up, then starts laughing. I have forgot to put on my trousers.

 

Then, fortunately, I am saved by my brutal awaking.

 

I am well into my 40's - or to me more precise - my 50's, and still have this nightmare at regular intervals. I my add that I never failed an exam, much less missed one.

 

My children are now at university. The get nervous when they have exams. I tell them not to worry. There's nothing to it. Just go and do your best. Get it over with.

 

Little do they know that it may haunt them at night time for the rest of their lives.