When college professors slumber, they dream of many things. But what do they most frequently dream about? Researchers at Stanford University recently published the results of a survey of over 3,000 faculty members at public and private four-year institutions across the United States. Here are the Top Ten Dreams respondents recorded in their dream diaries:
“I show up at class on Naked Tuesday, and the students inform me that there is no such thing as Naked Tuesday. They stare at me, not in a good way.”
“At commencement, I’m responsible for announcing the names of all the graduates. Most of the students are from Eastern Europe, and not a single vowel appears in their names. I severely pull a muscle in my tongue while pronouncing these names, and the swelling threatens to choke me to death. I ask a colleague to take over for me, and he refuses.”
“At his confirmation hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tells a Congressional committee that I was his favorite public health professor in college.”
“I am appointed Director of DEI Initiatives at Stigmata Christian Bible College in Thibodaux, Louisiana. On my first day, the school’s chaplain sets my car on fire.”
“I smuggle a small, portable electric heater into my office during the frigid January break. When I turn it on, three missiles carrying nuclear warheads are launched from the parking lot adjacent to the building. All three streak toward the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.”
“At the beginning of the semester, a student walks up to me at the end of class and claims to be ‘non-tertiary’. I tell the student that I’m sorry, but I don’t know what ‘non-tertiary’ means. A very small lawyer emerges from the student’s backpack and serves me with a subpoena.”
“I enter a 300-seat lecture hall to teach my course on Minor British Poets of the 18th Century, and every seat is occupied by a member of the Kardashian family. During class, the rear ends of all the female Kardashians begin to expand, until a buttock explodes. People die.”
“I’m representing the Administration at contract negotiations with the faculty union. At a bargaining session the union demands that the faculty teaching load be reduced to zero courses per semester. When I ask why, the response is that ‘we suck at teaching’. I agree to the demand because the logic is impeccable.”
“When I click on the first PowerPoint slide at the beginning of my lecture on the flora and fauna of the Amazon River Basin, the screen shows graphic images of my aunts and uncles participating in an incestuous orgy. Every time I depress the clicker in a panicked attempt to exit the display, the images just get larger and more detailed, covering the entire wall. When I smash the PC with a hammer, the revolting pictures remain, only now they are accompanied by the moans of my writhing relatives.”
“I’m standing in the Provost’s office as she gazes sternly at me from behind her desk and asks, ‘What’s this I hear about Naked Tuesdays?’