The college nightmare

It's now been 32 years since I graduated from the University of Montana. I was 17 when I began college and I was 20 when I graduated. The three years of college were filled with adventure. I lived on campus my freshman year and off campus the other two years. I also attended a couple of summers, where I also lived in a dorm.

My mom and dad with me for graduation at the University of Montana

There was quite a bit of difference between summer classes and the rest of the year. The big difference was that were always a number of teachers in my summer classes and it wasn't very hard to do better than the teachers who had returned to campus for continuing education classes. I don't mean to demean the teachers...but I was attending college year-round and had gotten this study thing down to a science. Teachers were only part-time students and, frankly, I'm not sure their hearts were into it. It's hard to believe now, but the teachers actually dressed worse and looked worse than the full-time students.

All in all, college life was a fairly pleasant experience. Sure, I had the obnoxious professor who thought it was beneath him to be teaching. There was also the foreign professor whom you couldn't understand. And the very liberal professors who would have been better teaching out East than in Missoula, Montana, but I digress.

If there was a downside to college, it was that I was always broke. I had part-time jobs, such as working as an umpire for softball games or at Eddy's Bakery when I was a junior, but I was still broke. I remember writing my senior paper while eating Salted Nut Rolls and drinking Mountain Dew. Going out for a drink meant going somewhere where the pitchers of beer cost a dollar. Hopefully, the popcorn was free.

But  I seemed to take all of this in stride because all of my college friends were also broke. I guess misery loves company. Anyway, being poor didn't seem to be too big of a hardship.

But now that I'm older, I seem to have a recurring nightmare about college. It doesn't have to do with snooty professors, part-time jobs or what I was eating...it has to do with not showing up for classes because I somehow always manage to forget my class schedule.

Like most nightmares, there isn't really a lot of rhyme or reason. In fact, sometimes it seems I'm still in high school because there seems to be a central locker where I'm going to load and unload my books. There were no lockers at college. A backpack or a briefcase, yes, but no locker.

But the real nightmare starts when I begin to hunt and search for my different classrooms. Now I do remember this being somewhat of a chore because my classes were often in different buildings and the buildings could be located north and south, east and west on campus. That meant for a lot of walking. What made it more difficult was there were 8,000 other students also trying to traverse the campus at the same time as me.

Still, when I went to college, this didn't seem like such a difficult chore and I rarely missed a class. I wasn't sick very much and I generally liked my classes...which is why I took them.

But in my nightmare, I always seem to forget where my classes are...because I haven't gone in a couple of weeks. And to make matters worse, I forget the combination to my locker. What I've been doing instead is always a mystery, but it hasn't been school work. Perhaps I go on a two-week bender...who knows.

Now I don't know how many times I've had that particular nightmare, but it seems to pop up a couple times a year. And it always ends bad because I have to take a test for a class that I haven't attended nor have I read the book or completed the assignments. Hopefully, I wake up before I get my final grade because it isn't going to be good.

A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting with brother-in-law Rich Graves who graduated from Eastern Montana College about 10 years before I graduated. We were talking about nightmares and both of us shared this one about college. It was almost word for word. Both of us agreed that while in college, we attended our classes. But in our nightmares, we don't go for some odd reason until we can't even remember where the classes are.

So I'm writing today not to relive this nightmare one more time, but I'm wondering if others share this same frightening experience. Maybe it's not about college, maybe it's about high school. But somehow, there is always that final humiliation because I've not studied, I've not read the material and I haven't heard the lectures. Boy, talk about taking a test with your eyes closed.

Again, my college was nothing like this. I enjoyed college. I really did. But I don't enjoy this recurring nightmare.