High School ended half of my life ago. Then and now, I was a good test taker and fair student over all. I have never been anxious about passing a test or course. I have never pulled an "all-nighter" to try to get prepared for an exam. I overslept for an exam once because I stayed up to late the night before playing Euchre. I arrived 40 minutes after the test began and politely asked to be allowed to take the exam. I got straight to work on the essays and 40 minutes later found myself to be the first person done. It was for a 300 level English History Class and I got an A on the exam.
So why is it that I am now having anxiety dreams about High School Triganomotry? I never took Trig, let alone with "Mrs. M." my high school math teacher. Yet in the dream I find myself one week before graduation remembering that I was suppose to be in that course all year but instead of attending the course I spent the time... somewhere, nowhere, in a kind of limbo of my own choosing. In the dream I am faced with the final, not knowing if even if I could cram a year's worth of math into a few days if it would matter. Will she pass me even if I ace the final?
You do not need an advanced degree to understand this dream, it is my subconscious screaming out its own anxiety about the societal changes before us. Even in the best case scenario the challenges will be great, there will be no grading on a curve or opportunity for make-up work. It will come down to a combination of luck, preparation and mental acuity. It has been a few generations since we in the United States have had to play this game. Intellectually I feel prepared for it. Emotionally, I am the teenager in my dream.
So I take a deep breath and I cope. I repeat the trite phrases handed down across the generations for times such as these, the words that do not really address how we are feeling but enable us to get up another day. "This too shall pass." "Drive-on, it don't mean nothin'." "Tomorrow is another day." The time for therapy and self-actualization has passed. The time to be who we need to be, who our children need us to be, who are neighbors need us to be, who we need ourselves to be, has arrived.
It no longer matters that I have a dislike for math and have organized my education, in part, to avoid it. There is a trig test to face and "Mrs. M" was a woman whose sole concern was if you had mastered the material, there would be no curve or social advancement. There will be no special pleading. She is, in my subconscious vocabulary, the perfect face of Darwinian selection. There is a test to take and there is no escaping it; only a choice of how I will face it.
I will face it like the man my forbearers hoped I would be. I am anxious because I should be. I am hopeful because I must be. I am confident because I have the mental acuity and preparation to be. All I need now is a little luck.