DreamloreDream dictionary › Common dreams › School or Exams
What does it mean to dream about school or an exam?
Being back at school, or sitting an exam you have not prepared for, is a dream many adults have long after their last test. Miller and Freud both wrote about it; their words are below, quoted exactly.
What Miller wrote (1901)
To dream of attending school, indicates distinction in literary work. If you think you are young and at school as in your youth, you will find that sorrow and reverses will make you sincerely long for the simple trusts and pleasures of days of yore.
Read the full entry for “School” →
What Freud wrote
Every one who has received his degree after having passed the final college examination, complains of the ruthlessness with which he is pursued by the anxiety dream that he will fail, that he must repeat his work, &c. … Now we dream of examinations for graduation or for the doctor’s degree—and who has not been faint-hearted in these tests, even though he belonged to the righteous?—whenever we fear that an outcome will punish us because we have not done something, or because we have not accomplished something as we should—in short whenever we feel the weight of responsibility.
Your dream is not a dictionary entry
A dream about school or exams comes with a place, other people and a feeling, and the old books read the same image very differently depending on those details. Dreamlore takes your whole dream, spoken or typed, finds the passages that fit it in Miller and Freud, quotes them word for word, and leaves you one question to reflect on. The journal stays on your phone.
Read your own dream in DreamloreFull dictionary entries
Questions
What does it mean to dream about school or an exam?
Miller's 1901 dictionary reads attending school as distinction in literary work, and being young at school again as longing for simpler days. Freud wrote that people who have passed their final examinations are pursued by the anxiety dream of failing them, and linked it to moments when we feel the weight of responsibility. These are readings to reflect on, not facts about your dream.
Where do these quotes come from?
They are quoted verbatim from public-domain books: Gustavus Hindman Miller's Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted (1901) and Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (translated by A. A. Brill, 1913). Each quote on this page is checked word for word against the source text before the page is served, the same check the Dreamlore app runs on every quote it shows.
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Dreamlore and these pages are for reflection and curiosity. The books quoted here are old — Miller wrote in 1901 and his entries read as omens, and many of Freud's ideas are disputed today. Take them as a starting point for thinking about your own dream, not as prediction or advice.