Hazel Waltenbaugh: Dreams are short movies our minds create while we sleep, a succession of images that might reveal what we are really thinking. Everyone has dreams, however, most of them are forgotten within 5 minutes of waking up. Scientists have struggled with figuring out what our dreams mean, and how exactly we dream. Welcome to Generation Dreams. Today, I interviewed Math teacher Jasper Turner about a recurring dream he used to have. 

Jasper Turner: I used to live in New York City for a little bit of time, and my kids were gonna come in and visit me and I had a recurring dream that I would wake up to in the middle of the night where one of my sons would run into the street {City nosies} and I would have to jump out and stop them from getting hit by a taxi cab. And it happened constantly, and it freaked me out.

HW: He said it was a recurring dream that he had for about four weeks straight. He told me that he typically doesn’t remember his dreams, but this one stands out and is still very vivid in his mind.

JT: I was very stressed that New York City was a very dangerous place for my children, and therefore I was very worried about them getting hurt.

HW: Some say dreams are meaningless because there isn’t concrete research demonstrating how they are created, but I think dreams can reflect your thoughts, hopes, fears, that can sometimes be hidden in your brain, similar to Mr. Turner’s dream. In a book called The interpretations of Dreams, Sigmund Freud suggests our dreams are related to wish fulfillment, meaning they are related to our unconscious desires or fantasies. He also suggests that dreams can have multiple meanings, including the use of symbolism, which can be why our dreams can be so unusual. Next, Health Assistant Monica Garrido shared her dream with me, which also happens to be recurring.

Monica Garrido: It’s like a, It’s the same dream for years now and it’s like the weirdest thing and I think it has to do with me being traumatized by like a horror movie, and then that like just converting into a dream. But anyways, it’s like in my dream it’s my siblings and my mom and myself, and we used to live in his house like years and years ago. So it had like a big bedroom and a walk-in closet like a big closet that was like technically another room. So like in the dream My little brother is like three or like two I don’t know he’s like a toddler. He’s like sitting on the bed. And then my other brother is there as well. I don’t know what he’s doing. And every time I come in there, like my mom would be right there with my brother. Just like talking you know like a normal dream, but then all of a sudden like I turn and I see in that closet, another person, that looks just like my mom and she’s just standing there too. And then I’m just like, okay, and they both come out and I have to decide, like, which one is the real one. And I don’t know. And it’s like, and like I feel like I’m in danger or not necessarily me but I feel like my siblings are in danger in it like I have to decide which one is the real one and I know if like I pick the wrong one something bad’s gonna happen but I don’t know what it is. So I have that reoccurring dream for like years now, but like every time like I never get to choose because I always wake up, like scared, but I’ve had that dream like over the years like multiple times. And I like tried to force myself like as I get older, like I try to force myself to stay sleeping, to continue on. But I just always wake up like it never finished and so I never know.

HW: Garrido’s dream then made me wonder why some people remember their dreams and some don’t, and why some only remember specific ones. There are many theories on this including how your brain’s memory works, the consistency and amount of your sleep, stress, trauma, and even personality traits. Turner told me that he thinks his dream sticks out because of how much he loves his children. Even though he had this dream about 5 years ago, it still sticks out, and he said it was probably because he stressed about it. The most common dreams people tend to remember are the ones that scare them, or involve there fears, like Turner and Garrido’s stories. I also talked to Physics Teacher Sam Hinh, who also has a recurring dream about something that used to worry him.

Sam Hinh: So, I usually have this dream, It’s this dream where I wake up in a class, and I’ve never taken the class before, and the professor shows up and says this is your final exam, and I’m like oh no, I’ve never taken this class before, what happened with all my homework? And then I take the midterm and all that stuff, and them, um yeah. And then I wake up, It’s weird. So, I still have school dreams, even as a teacher.

HW: Hinh’s dream is a common one among many people, the most obvious representation of it is the fear of being late or unprepared. Which can also tie back to Froid’s point of personality traits, that being diligent.

A few months ago I started to realize that my dreams were even more unusual than before, and after a while, I began remembering my dreams every night. I typically have 1-5 dreams that I can remember per night, which I had never noticed before. This made me wonder exactly why I had all of a sudden started to remember them. Dreams are hard to understand, and can probably be interpreted however you chose. Why and how we dream is mainly still unknown, and the wide variety of things one can experience while sleeping is fascinating.