Exam Results
Dream of high expectations
A young medical student, Sam, reported the following dream.
Dream report: Exam Results
I was in my final year of doing my degree and hoping for good grades so I could gain admission into Medical School. It was a couple of weeks just after my exams and I was waiting on my results to come out. One night I had this dream…
I was sitting facing my computer screen (we could access our results online) and logging in to my university page. After some agonizing moments waiting for the page to load, up came my results: 3 As and a B. Now this was good, but not quite good enough. Lucky for me, on the top right corner of my computer screen was a button that said “Re-mark.” Now such a button does not occur in real life, but I desperately wanted good results so I clicked it. Lo and behold, the new page that loaded said 4 Cs! To my utter horror I tried clicking the “Back” button, but it just wouldn’t go!
Sam obviously expected himself to achieve top-level results, and was dissatisfied with even slightly less. When in his dream he pushed for perfection, however, his inner Trickster responded by reducing him to a bare pass, which shocked him into readiness for a more realistic result.
The Trickster is an archetypal function of the psyche which serves to bring the ego down to earth when it over-reaches its ability, thus helping to keep us sane. Fortunately Sam was able to laugh at himself after he woke up!