Thursday, June 18, 2009

Professor Dreams

What do professors dream about? One of my colleagues had a strange dream recently: one of his graduate students was in prison.

Was this a bad dream? In fact, it apparently was not.

Both my colleague and his student, who was imprisoned for unknown reasons, were happy (in the dream). The advisor was happy because the student had access in prison to everything he needed to do his research, and the student was happy because he would have something to do while in prison.

It is probably not a coincidence that this colleague has recently had trouble getting one or more of his graduate students to focus and complete some projects.

10 comments:

Doctor Pion said...

Sounds like something Prof Smith of PhD comics would dream up.

Have you ever had a TV crew film in your lab, like in this week's story?

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1187

human said...

Okay, that's really funny!

Janus Professor said...

Last night I dreamed that my post-doc *finally* set up our vacuum oven.

Sam said...

*snort, chickle chuckle*

This is the funniest post I have read in a long, long time.

When I am bothered by something or bumping up on a big deadline, or procrastinating a lot when I know I should be productive, I often have very vibrant, but strange, dreams.

FrauTech said...

Your colleague's dream seemed almost like the perfect solution! Though many grad students might consider their years in the lab as akin to a prison.

Ms.PhD said...

LOL!!

I've definitely had students who would have benefited from being locked in a cage with their project and nothing else to do.

Would love to meet this colleague. Sounds like quite a character. Not sure I would want to work in his lab, though!

Anonymous said...

This is well funny! And everyone's happy...

JLK said...

LMAO!

Anonymous said...

I was amused the first time I had a "there is no chalk, the laptop/projector is broken, and why didn't I remember to prepare today's lecture?" dream instead of a "OMG, the final exam is today, my pencil keeps breaking, and why oh why did I forget to go to all of the lectures?" dream. Same stress, new context.

Unbalanced Reaction said...

I'm starting a new position in the fall, and I am having (about every other night) a dream about failing a class in college because of poor attendance.

It's actually so vivid that once I wake up, I'm pissed off for a few minutes at myself for screwing up so badly in college. Then I remember that it was just a dream. And I never took the class I was dreaming about. And that I very, very badly need coffee.