Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University rattled off a few common school-dream variations: The dreamer has to rush to an exam after having overslept, or they can’t find their classroom. “It’s a really common theme,” she said. “And it’s common not only for people who are still in school... It’s a very common theme for people who are far into adulthood, who have been out of school forever.” These dreams tend to pop up when the dreamer is anxious in waking life, particularly about being evaluated by an authority figure. We revisit the space where we first experienced success or failure based on our performance. 

哈佛大学的睡梦研究员迪尔德雷·巴雷特（Deirdre Barrett）一口气列出了一连串和学校有关的不同梦境：梦里发现自己睡过了头，必须赶去考试；或者梦到自己找不到教室。“这是一个非常常见的主题，”她说。“不仅是对还在学校的人们来说常见，对那些早已长大成人、离开学校很久的人来说也是如此。”当做梦者在白天焦虑不安，特别是面临重大考验的时候，这些梦容易突然出现。我们会重新回顾自己第一次经历考验时成功或失败的情形。

Jane Teresa Anderson, a dream analyst, believes that dreams are the result of your mind attempting to process memories. What might be behind “that dream scenario that you’ve picked out, being back at school and having to take this final” is “feeling tested in life, feeling that you have to respond to other people’s expectations. So you think back to school.” 

解梦师简·特蕾莎·安德森（Jane Teresa Anderson）认为，梦是大脑试图处理记忆的结果。“你选择的那个不得不回到学校、参加这场期末考试的梦中场景”的背后可能是“在生活中遇到了考验，觉得你需要回应他人的期望。所以你才回想起学校。”

The reason school dominates as a go-to anxiety setting is because school is where we build our understanding of how life works. Feelings of stress, inadequacy, embarrassment, heartache—these often happen first in the school setting. If feelings of inadequacy prompt you to have an anxiety dream, and if that anxiety dream prompts you to study harder, you might just have a better chance of “surviving” a big work presentation. 

学校之所以在常见的焦虑梦境中占据主要地位，是因为我们正是在学校里开始理解世事如何运转。压力、缺乏信心、尴尬和心痛这些感觉，往往第一次都是发生在学校里。如果因为觉得自己不称职，你做了个焦虑的梦，而这个梦又促使你更努力学习，那么你就更有可能在一个非常重要的工作演讲中“生存”下来。

Still, if you’d like to defy evolution and finally graduate from dream school, Anderson has a method. First, make the connection between the events in your dream and the recent events in your life, so you can learn something about what you’re feeling and more easily let it go. Then, imagine the dream scenario again, but this time with a more calming outcome. “And although that seems to be just changing the outcome of the dream,” Anderson said, “it will actually change your mindset, whatever the situation is in your life that you’re responding to.” 

不过，如果你想挑战一下进化论、从梦中的学校毕业，安德森有一个办法。首先，把梦中发生的事情和生活中最近发生的事情联系起来，这样你就可以了解自己的感受，更容易放手。然后，重新想象一下梦中的情景，但这一次换一个令人安心的结局。安德森说：“虽然这似乎只是改变了梦里的结局，但它实际上会改变你的思维模式，无论你在生活中所面对的是什么情况都会管用。”