MIR ROR 9.28.2016
THE DREAMS ISSUE GUO: DREAMS OF MY PAST | 2
Q&A WITH PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR SATEIA | 5
WIEN: THREE IDIOTS TRY TO TRIPLE BUNK THEIR BEDS | 4
ALISON GUH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
2// MIRROR
Dreams of my Past
Editors’ Note
Senior columnist Clara Guo ’17 writes from the perspective of her elderly self COLUMN
Settling upon “Dreams” for this week’s theme proved a mistake for Hayley, as it only inspired Lauren to discuss, at length, her disgusting recurring dreams about her teeth becoming injured or falling out at any given opportunity, even after Hayley pointedly remarked that she doesn’t think anyone really cares about anyone else’s dreams. Many people, however, seem to talk about their own dreams, so with that in mind we decided to let our writers talk about their own dreams (who is getting subtweeted by JoJo from “The Bachelor?”), get to the bottom of the science of dreams (why does Lauren have a habit of getting in fights with significant others about infidelity in dreamworld?) and explore what happens when dreams change (is Hayley right in thinking that no one actually dreams of becoming an investment banker?).
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09.28.16 VOL. CLXXIII NO. 117 MIRROR EDITORS HAYLEY HOVERTER LAUREN BUDD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF REBECCA ASOULIN PUBLISHER RACHEL DECHIARA
EXECUTIVE EDITOR GAYNE KALUSTIAN
By Clara Guo
The year is 2079. I hear a knock, a soft two thuds landing on my door. My eldest daughter walks in, holding a transparent storage box haphazardly duct-taped together. She kisses me on the cheek and drops the box near my feet. We open the box together, carefully tearing the tape away. When all the tape has been balled up, I take one end of the lid, and my daughter the other. We hear the click of release, and I hold my breath, wondering how many memories lay dormant and forgotten. My old journals lay in neat piles near the top, stacked one behind the other. I reach for the oldest, a blue spiral-bound notebook with a large butterfly decorated with beads that shake like maracas. My first entry is dated 2001. I was six years old. I hand the journal to my daughter, her graying hair now pulled into a small bun. As she places it neatly in the corner of my empty bookshelf, I reach for the next. My 11th journal spans my college years. I run my fingers over the white leather, crisscrossed with blue lines to represent the sea or perhaps escape to far-away places. The navy bookmark, attached by just a few threads, falls randomly on page 234. Sept. 27, 2016. I’m going to mail Clarion my signed acceptance letter this week. I flip earlier, thankful that time has been kind to the black and blue ink. Aug. 30, 2015. 15X. This summer taught me how to be alone, how to be okay with being alone. I close the journal, a small smile tickling my lips. “Did I ever tell you the story of this journal?” I ask my daughter. She shakes her head. “It was a birthday gift from my boyfriend at the time. He bought it from the Barnes and Noble in Union Square. We used to meet there after work in the winter, when I was interning at InkWell.” I pause, remembering how I used to walk up and down the aisles, searching for the authors InkWell represented until I found a thriller and brought it with me to the fourth floor, where I sat for hours reading, waiting for his call.
’17: “So I had another fire in my building last night.”
“I thought I was going to marry him.” “What happened?” I shrugged. We had broken up so long ago. “We just stopped loving each other.” I flip through the rest of my journals, reliving memories in Boston, in medical school, as a new mother, until half the box is empty and the remainder contains random mementos, collected over the decades. My daughter arranges them on my windowsill, hangs up photos and scans old letters. At the bottom of the box is a large piece of white paper, folded into fourths. April 2013. AP Psychology Final: “My Future” is printed in neat letters on the back. My hands shake as I unfold my project, worried that the creases have grown too worn with time. On the front is a roadmap covered with hand-drawn pictures depicting the most significant events in my life as they happened, starting from birth until my death. Age 0. Born in D.C. Age 2. Lived in China with grandparents Age 3. Sister born Age 7. Started figure skating and piano Age 12. First relationship Age 13. Fractured ankle from skating jump Age 18. Senior prom, matriculated at Dartmouth Age 22. Attend John Hopkins medical school Age 25. Engaged Age 26. Residency Age 27. Married with own house Age 28. Fellowship Age 30. First job as a neurosurgeon Age 31. First kid Age 33. Second kid Age 36. First family vacation to Hawaii Age 48. Kids go off to college Age 55. Pay off mortgage Age 59. Parents pass away Age 61. Grandchildren Age 67. Retire Age 68. Travel the world without kids and grandkids Age 73. Mediate fight between kids and grandkid Age 80. Spouse dies Age 85. My last words I read and reread each moment this 18 year old believed would define her
Dirt Cowboy cashier to ’20: “No, we don’t take DBA.”
’17: “The day doesn’t end until I sleep, so sometimes the day doesn’t end.”
life. I laugh at the notion that I would finish my residency and fellowship in four years, the expectation that I would marry the man of my dreams three years after graduation and the prediction that I would die at 85. I had forgotten the certainty with which I approached medical school and the blind conviction of my future as a neurosurgeon, both of which began to envelope me as a junior at Dartmouth. I saw my first meningioma removal when I was 21 years old. I stood just a foot or two behind the surgeon, close enough to watch the bag hanging under the patient’s head fill with bright red blood, white chunks floating and falling like leaves. The scrub tech showed me the giant piece of skull the surgeon had removed, explaining how the curved spatula preserved the brain’s surface and how the little blue nets would save the bone. I squatted on my heels, craning my neck so I could watch the surgeon suck the tumor out, the lead apron falling heavily on my knees. This is what I want to do with my life. The surgeon took me aside after the operation, showing me the completely removed tumor that could have easily enclosed half my thumb. We marveled, together, at the size. “Do you want to be a neurosurgeon?” he asked later, after he had removed his mask and thrown out his sterile dark blue scrubs. I nodded, resolute. “Yes.” I was ready to spend my 20s and 30s training 16 hours a day, ready to postpone children until I was financially and vocationally secure. I prepared myself to tackle the predominantly male, predominantly white field of neurosurgery as an Asian female. I wanted to save lives. I wanted to speak to family members afterward and deliver the good news of a survival or a lengthy relief from pain. I wanted to be a hero. I take a deep breath and fold the paper back into fourths. I hand it to my daughter. “Have I told you the story of my first patient?”
’20: “This is perfect sandals and socks weather.”
’18 in Foco: “I really don’t want to sit on that side.”
TRENDING @ Dartmouth
GIRLS’ RUSH
Tears. Secrecy. A strictly enforced “silence period.” May the odds be ever in your favor.
GUYS’ RUSH
Beers. Camaraderie. Lots of friendly guy-flirting. But, you know, no homo, no homo, no homo.
WEATHER
Putting the “sweat” into “sweater weather.”
DEBATES
Should we move to Mexico or Canada?
RESUME DROP
Drop it like it’s hot.
BLISSFUL IGNORANCE
Midterms are right around the corner, but if we can’t see them, they can’t see us.
MIRROR //3
4// MIRROR
Q & A with Michael Sateia
The sleep expert sits down to discuss facts and fictions surrounding dreams. Q&A
By Madeleine McDermott
Michael Sateia is an emeritus psychiatry professor at the Geisel School of Medicine, focusing on sleep. He was the director of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Sleep Disorder Center for about 35 years. He is also an adjunct professor in the College’s Psychology department for the past 20 years, teaching an annual course on sleep and sleep disorders. Sateia graduated from Dartmouth in 1970, majoring in biopsychology — today known as neuroscience. So generally in your class how would you introduce the idea of dreaming and what we know about the purpose that might serve? MS: We talk about the physiology of dreaming, meaning how dreams are generated. That’s still a relatively controversial area, but dreams are not exclusive to — but are certainly strongly connected to — rapid eye movement or REM sleep. And then we get into the weeds as it were, discussing sort of what the meaning of dreams is, if there is a meaning of dreams, and if so what is their significance. Some theories suggest that dreams are no more than a kind of random electrical bombardment of the brain. Others see much more meaning in dream activity. Of course one can go back to Sigmund Freud who thought there was a great deal of meaning in dream activity, but there are also more modern theories about the significance of dreams. For example, one of the theories that we discuss is dreams as a kind of threat rehearsal; that we rehearse threats to improve our adaptive response to them. There was an interesting piece that my wife just posted on Facebook for me this week from The Washington Post about academic anxiety in dreams. And in fact I tell the students about this because certainly it’s very familiar to me personally, which is dreaming that you suddenly find yourself sitting in a final exam and you realize that you’ve forgotten that you’re taking the course and you’ve done nothing and you’ve gone to no classes. But that’s an example of what might be threat rehearsal, you know, our brain sort of telling us that we need to keep our nose to the grindstone academically to be properly prepared. And other people dream about other threats, you know, being chased or assaulted or something like that. And then sometimes dreams go awry and become nightmares, which essentially are dreams that produce intense anxiety and typically are threatening in nature. And some people tend to be nightmare sufferers just by nature, but a lot of what we see, and certainly this is true clinically, are post-traumatic nightmares. So in combat veterans and individuals, particularly women but not limited to women, sexual assault often is accompanied by nightmares in which the threat is revisited or at least the emotion connected to that is revisited, and that of course is a huge problem in the post-traumatic stress sufferers. And this is a not uncommon problem. The nightmare problems and the associated sleep disturbances are often one of the primary complaints that they have with the dis-
order. One thing that I’ve always been interested in is sleepwalking and night terrors — when there’s a physical component to the dream. Is there a clinical cause for that? MS: Well, actually, sleep walking and terrors come out of a different state of sleep. They come out of deep, non-REM sleep, what we call NIII or non-REM stage III sleep. And they’re actually quite distinct from nightmares which are mostly in REM and these are usually not accompanied by extensive dream activity. You know, if you ask people who’ve been sleepwalking or who have had a sleep terror what they were thinking or dreaming about you usually don’t get a very extensive report. There might be a fixed threatening image but not the elaborate, sequential, bizarre dream activity that we get out of REM sleep. And there is a strong biological component to this. They’re disorders that are highly hereditary in nature. We don’t know exactly what’s being transmitted genetically but clearly there’s a strong predisposition that is transmitted genetically. So if you have a parent who has a history of frequent sleep walking or terrors your chances as a child of having that go way up. And if you have both parents who have a history of sleepwalking or terrors you have a pretty high probability as a child that you’re going to be affected as well. Some people I’ve talked to say that they never remember their dreams — why is that? Is it true that everybody does dream? MS: Yes, everybody dreams. And you know, if we put those people in the lab and we recorded their sleep and we woke them out of a REM sleep period and asked them what was going on in their mind, they are with very high frequency, probably 80 to 90 percent likely to report a dream. The reason why people say they don’t dream is typically two things. One, they’re usually pretty sound sleepers, so they don’t often wake up in association with ongoing dream activity. And they also often don’t pay very much attention to that so when they’re waking in the morning, they don’t think about whether they were dreaming. And dreams are lost very quickly upon awakening. And so if you don’t awaken within a short period of time, you know, we’re talking 5 to 10 minutes perhaps of dream activity, and sort of think about what was going on in your mind, then your experience is going to be that you don’t dream. But they do. So if every day when you wake up you try to think about your dream, does that at all affect how well you will be able to recall future dreams? MS: Oh yeah, people sort of train themselves. I mean there are people who keep dream journals, and the more you focus on your dream activity, the more likely you are to recall dreams and sort of experience a much richer dream life, as it were. And in fact there
COURTESY OF MICHAEL SATEIA
also is this phenomenon of lucid dreaming in which people can actually train themselves to develop conscious awareness during dreams, and are actually able to manipulate the content of dreaming during sleep. I had heard people talk about lucid dreaming, but I wasn’t sure if it was actually a real thing. MS: Yeah, it’s real, and you could sort of say, well how do we know it’s real? I mean maybe these people are just making up stuff. And in fact there is a well-recognized signal that’s going on in the laboratory when you record lucid dreamers, and you can prearrange a signal which would be — well, we’re paralyzed during REM sleep but we maintain our eye movements and respiratory activity — so you can’t tell them to raise their arm when they’re in a dream to signal but you can tell them to look right three times and look left three times and look right three times. And you can see that happen on the Polysomnogram, because we record eye movement activity along with brainwaves and a lot of other stuff. And so these people, you can see them go into REM and you can see this boom, boom, boom, looking right three times, looking left three times, looking right three times. So clearly they are having some sort of conscious awareness and are able to signal, you know, I’m in REM right now and yet I’m consciously aware. You clearly have had many experi-
ences with patients who have had sleep disorders, and I was wondering if there was a disorder or condition that you have found most interesting to work with over the course of your career? MS: Our day usually consists of at least 75 or 80 percent dealing with people with sleep apnea. Some of the behavioral disturbances in sleep like REM behavior disorder where people start acting out their dreams is very fascinating. And also narcolepsy, which is a disorder of excessive sleepiness that is accompanied by episodes of sudden muscle paralysis that are triggered by motion like laughter, that’s also very interesting. And particularly interesting because in the last decade and a half or so we’ve come to understand the exact cause of narcolepsy. It turns out there’s a group of brain cells that are destroyed and they’re destroyed almost certainly because of an autoimmune disorder, and that’s when the body’s immune system starts attacking its own cells, things like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis those are all autoimmune disease, in this case the target of the immune response is this cluster of nerve cells in the hypothalamus in the center of the brain. And it turns out that those brain cells are very important in regulating sleep-wake, and when you knock them out, they die and that becomes narcolepsy. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
5// MIRROR
Three Idiots Decide to Triple Bunk Their Beds
In the first installment of her senior column, Elise introduces her roommates and their dreams. COLUMN
By Elise Wien
TIFFANY ZHAI/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
My freshman year, my two room- puter or phone. Right now, her bed is in mates and I decided to triple bunk our the outer room because we haven’t gotten beds. We were living on the third floor of our futon yet. We predict her bed will be Russell Sage and had a tiny inner room out there forever. in which we all slept. The idea was that Last night, I dreamed I was on Lesbian triple bunking the beds would leave half Island. Its main exports were packaged of the room empty for a mini-trampoline medicaments, aluminum plating and, of (we didn’t have one), a drum kit (none of course, lesbians, when they decide to leave us played) or a blanket fort (it fell). I was the island, which is not very often. Everyon the topmost bed and one on the island looked hit my head on the ceilexactly like me, and we ing a lot. Corinne, on “Everyone on the were all on the same the bottom, was about island looked exactly menstrual cycle, which a half a foot away from is a poetic notion. Like the floor, and Kayuri, like me, and we were all poetic notions, this in the middle, felt like all on the same was poetic in thought she was in a coffin. We disastrous in pracmenstrual cycle, which but took apart the beds tice. Every month there shortly after bunking is a poetic notion. Like was an island-wide them, but there was a all poetic notions, this shortage of feminine point where we were all care products which dreaming stacked up on was poetic in thought has resulted in a undereach other. ground tampon market, but disastrous in Corinne gets pissed the clandestine nature practice.” when she sees people of which was bad for iswith dream catcher tatland morale. toos. In the mornings, “She had one on her when the inhabitants stomach. Over her pelof Lesbian Island left vis. Does her vagina have nightmares? Is their homes, their hair was done exactly she having crotchal nightmares?” like mine. We would encounter each other Last night, Kayuri dreamed that she in the street and compliment each other’s was on spring break with her friends in styling. Colombia, but they confined themselves To prepare for civil war, the people to the apartment because they inexplica- of Lesbian Island baked more bread than bly decided they couldn’t go outside un- they had cupboards to hold and wiped less they had a knife. down surfaces with damp cloths. They Corinne needs a meditation podcast to slept on a chaise longue and wore fivefall asleep: layered tulle caps into battle, pulled down “Now imagine you are walking down to cover their ears and filter noises into a a staircase. With each step down you sink softness. They stockpiled all fruit that can deeper and deeper into calmness. One be used as a weapon, for example, that step deeper into calmness. One step deep- of the spiny variety, such as cactus fruit, er…” pineapple, dragonfruit, prickly pear and, Kayuri is never the last one to fall the motherlode, durian. asleep, her face blue in the light of a comOn the day of the battle, I watched
from a hilltop as thousands of women and its inhabitants are rasping at each othwith my likeness went door to door attack- er late into the night. Still, on the whole ing each other with kiwano melons and it’s a land of refuge. rambutans, which didn’t do much damOn the all-women island on which I live, age unless plunged into the opponents’ on which I’ve lived for the past three years, eye sockets. By nightfall there were forests the other two inhabitants are armed with of women with tropical fruits where their fruit, ready to garnish anyone who tries to eyes once were. hurt us. None of us get enough sleep, but One woman, whose left eye was still we’d all be willing to take the middle bunk intact and whose right eye was replaced by if it meant lending the others a moment a jackfruit among a few mangled tendons, of reprieve. They teach me peacekeeping had spent the last hour separated from strategies to take to the Island, for when the fighting and turned toward the hilltop I’m sleeping in the same room as them but with her arm outstretched and pointing many hundreds of miles away. straight at me. Kayuri’s our expert on negotiation tacSlowly the other tics. She is the most persiswomen noticed her, tent person in the world; and they all began “Maybe we’ll settle on the Human Filibuster. to climb the hill in a something two-state, Corinne’s our diplomacy zig-zag pattern, some specialist; everyone thinks bumping into one and we can triple bunk she’s taller than she actualanother, some using our beds and make ly is because she has amazothers for support, all ing posture. room for the Island pointing at me and Our freshman year, closing in while the on the other side of some people in our buildcity below burned our tiny inner room, ing thought she was the with the smell of UGA just because she fructose — when I making room for our walks with such authority. woke up. Also she is very loud. dream selves as well This morning, I I guess I can be the as our waking ones.” ate oatmeal with soft notetaker and distribute fruit and I gargled the treaty to the denizens saltwater for my of the Island once we’re throat, which is raw. done. Maybe we’ll settle I wonder if I’d been on something two-state, shouting in my sleep, and we can triple bunk our trying to calm the inhabitants of the Is- beds and make room for the Island on the land into a peace treaty. It dawns on me other side of our tiny inner room, makthat an island of only women doesn’t have ing room for our dream selves as well our to be Lesbian Island, though I like the idea waking ones. of this utopic ladyland where they want My dream self is leading a burning for nothing else. queer clone fruit army, Corinne’s is atThe all-women island on which I live tempting an inside voice and Kayuri’s, I (North Mass 310, come hang out, we have hear, is going to return armed with a steak snacks) is not on fire. There’s definitely knife. We’re gonna need all the room we more dirty laundry than there should be, can get.
6// MIRROR
Major Changes
An exploration of how students change their majors and paths at college. STORY
By Anna Staropoli
In the fall, everyone seems freshman year. This gave her amto have a plan. Overly optimistic ple time to begin the engineering ’20s crowd Foco with innocent track, minimizing the stress of back-and-forths about planning switching majors after already their majors — econ, obviously. having declared. Pre-meds, at least for now, pack Many Dartmouth students, into health panels, new note- however, discover their true inbooks in hand. terests much Many freshlater in their men schedule “[Because of pre-med college careers. their classes by requirements over the For John pre-requisites, Gilmore ’17, next three years] I still the realization hoping to check off box- have structure because that he was es that guar- I have to. But studying the antee they’ll wrong subject have enough choosing classes has didn’t occur room for that become more of a until the end Foreign Study of sophomore term-by-term Program or year, when he perhaps for situation.” realigned his an additional area of study minor. Durfrom the preing Orienta- -SAM KOCEN ’19 med and bioltion last fall, ogy to English. I watched His dream my freshman of attending floormate ormedical school ganize a stack and becomof papers in a McLaughlin com- ing a doctor began like many mon room, mapping out a four- dreams: through one’s parents. year plan class by class. As both of Gilmore’s parents It’s easy to think of dreams as followed the medical school-reslinear. It may actually be easier idency-fellowship structure typito describe. Simply follow the cal in the health field, Gilmore steps, continue the plan and hope assumed that he, too, would find your interests don’t change. that track fulfilling. But even plans don’t always “That was an orderly path; I go, well, according to plan. Tara thought I would like it,” he said. Burchmore ’19 began her freshWhile the plan seemed great man fall with a plan to major in theory, Dartmouth showed in theater and government, but Gilmore an alternative to the after exposure to previously un- pre-med track. Gilmore fell in discovered disciplines at Dart- love with 20th century English mouth, her ambitions evolved. after taking “Literary History” Exposure to new subjects his sophomore winter. prompted Burchmore to experiWhen Gilmore changed his ment with her classes. In the major, he was driven to drop-pre winter, she enrolled in an engi- med: a change common for many neering course and found that it college students. Freshman fall it exceeded her initial expectations. seems like everyone wants to be a She is now an economics doctor, yet as the term continues, modified with engineering ma- the reality of pre-health sinks in, jor. and many more shift away from Burchmore partially attri- the path. butes this academic insight to For Sam Kocen ’19, a career Dartmouth’s distributive require- in medicine was — and still is — ments, which led her to take the the goal. engineering class. Kocen , at the start of his first Though humanities students term, wanted to be a biology maoften procrastinate their impend- jor and pre-med. Now in his secing labs and STEM students look ond year, Kocen still plans to folfor less-traditional ways to fulfill low a career in medicine — only their literature courses, stories with a slightly different route. He like Burchmore’s suggest that dis- decided to not pursue the biology tributive requirements may actu- major after taking the challengally be crucial in discovering hid- ing Biology 13 class, discovering den interests. he didn’t like lab and wasn’t a Fortunately, Burchmore un- “huge science guy.” earthed this passion early on, as Yet for all the classes that disshe opted to fulfill her technology suade students from pursuing and applied science distributive a particular field, there are just
as many that push students toward their passions. In addition to taking the biology class that deterred him from studying science last spring, Kocen also took history 26, “The Vietnam War.” This ultimately compelled him to pursue a degree in history. “History was just a lot more exciting to study than biology was,” Kocen said, speaking to the reasoning behind his transition. He now intends to fulfill the pre-med requirements and practice medicine, just through a lesstraditional undergraduate course of study. Since changing his major, Kocen has found himself more able to experiment with classes. Rather than follow a rigid schedule of exclusively science classes, Kocen now allows room in his schedule to try out classes he’s genuinely interested in. “I still have structure because I have to,” he said, referring to the pre-med requirements over the next three years. “But choosing classes has become more of a term-by-term situation.” In addition to classes, off-
terms also help undergraduates carve out major paths for themselves. The First-Year Fellows program, for instance, gives Dartmouth students the chance to experiment with policy related careers, testing the waters before committing to a field of study. Burchmore, who interned as a first-year fellow to Senator Kirstin Gillibrand ’88, said the program confirmed her interest in pursuing a career in government. “First-Year Fellows definitely helped show me what I want to do with my life, which is work in government relations at a tech company,” Burchmore said. “That’s why I’m holding on to my engineering modification.” Off-terms further enable the discovery of new dreams, as Dartmouth organizes internships for students via organizations like the Rockefeller Center, the Dickey Center and the Center for Professional Development. Through the Center for Professional Development, Gilmore found a job in journalism. He worked as a science writer for
for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, synthesizing his interests in biology and English rather than abandoning his dreams of medicine completely. “I work biology in through writing,” Gilmore said. “I see myself as kind of the middle man. I have the qualities of an English major; I know how to write and explain things to people. But at the same time, I believe I know enough about biology discovery in order to explain it well.” Consequently, Gilmore sees his life heading in a different direction than when he first began college. Though journalism has replaced his initial dream of medical school, working at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has shown him that dreams don’t always have to be separate. “That experience has helped me figure out what I want to do with my life,” Gilmore said. “I could be a medical writer for a science newspaper or a scribe for a doctor who needs me to explain issues to the patient. It’s a nice balance between both my interests and skills.”
MIRROR //7
Mirror Asks: Dream Edition
We ask our staff about their wackiest dreams, nightmares and aspirations — hilarity ensued. 1. Tell us about some interesting dreams you’ve had. Jaden Young ’20 I once dreamed I was a ghost trapped in my own house. My family ignored me whenever I tried to speak to them, but I just shrugged it off and watched television. I didn’t realize I was a ghost until I tried to leave the house and couldn’t. Then I had some sort of a dream-flashback in which I saw myself being hit by a car. I was not pleased to find that I had kicked the bucket, and I spent the rest of the dream crying over my own death. Julia O’Sullivan ’20 I had a dream that I was Chris Harrison during JoJo’s season of the Bachelorette, and I eloped with one of the contestants and got sued by ABC and subtweeted by JoJo. Cristian Cano ’20 My most memorable dreams tend to be the ones in which I do something that I could never do in real life — usually that means I get transported to some sort of fictional world. Yeon Chung ’19 I was Hermione, and I was in my middle school gym in my roller blades. Harry was fighting Voldemort with forks, not wands. Then I had to bring back Harry, Ron, other teammates and myself to the Muggle world. Hermione is usually smart in the movies, but I was a dumb Hermione, so I couldn’t do the spell. Lauren Budd ’18 I once had a “Groundhog Day”-type dream in which I woke up and went about my entire morning only to realize it was a dream and wake up and go about my morning only to realize that was a dream, which repeated so many times that when I actually woke up I was disoriented. 2. Do you think that dreams can have meaning? Jaden Young ’20 My junior year of high school, I had the classic show-up-to-school-inyour-underwear dream for the first time ever. The next day, I ripped the seat of my pants right before a big biology test. Can I predict the future? Maybe. Julia O’Sullivan ’20 The one that I had about JoJo and Chris Harrison is undoubtedly a premonition. Cristian Cano ’20 I think that dreams can be significant. I don’t know a whole lot about neuroscience, but I believe that it’s important to subconsciously process information to help us make sense of things. As far as any greater meaning or foreshadowing goes, however, I’m not sure I buy into it. Hayley Hoverter ’17 Maybe! I’ll often go for walks and wind up in places that I think I had only seen in dreams. But then again I have horrible memory, so they probably just look familiar because I’ve been there before.
Lauren Budd ’18 I think that dreams are usually a reflection of general or overwhelming moods, which explains why I have so many anxiety-related dreams in which I fail miserably at any number of tasks. When you were a kid, what did you want to be? Jaden Young ’20 I loved “The Powerpuff Girls” when I was little — I even named my male cat Blossom after one of them. I desperately wanted to be Bubbles, the blond one. My parents have pictures of me dressed as Bubbles for Halloween. I think they’re keeping them just in case they ever need to blackmail me. Julia O’Sullivan ’20 When I was a kid, I wanted to be Miss Piggy because there was a picture book at my preschool that featured her morning routine, which included eating chocolate, and only chocolate, for breakfast. Cristian Cano ’20 I was a huge Nintendo fan growing up — and still am — and I always idolized Ash from the Pokémon animated series. He just seemed to have the perfect life — traveling with his best friends across distant lands, capturing and training Pokémon and consistently saving the day! Yeon Chung ’19 I wanted to be Blossom from “The Powerpuff Girls.” She was cute. Not that I wasn’t cute back then. Hayley Hoverter ’17 I wanted to be Meg Cabot, the author of “The Princess Diaries,” which were my favorite books as a kid. I stopped wanting to be her when I found out that she lives in Florida. Lauren Budd ’18 I wanted to stay myself but live in the Harry Potter universe. 4. Do you have recurring dreams? Jaden Young ’20 My dreams often involve me forgetting something — an assignment, a class, my mother’s birthday. Julia O’Sullivan ’20 I have a recurring dream that I’ve slept through an alarm when I need to wake up from a nap and be somewhere. Though, now that I think of it, those probably aren’t dreams. Yeon Chung ’19 No. Hayley Hoverter ’17 I always have really vivid dreams where I’m falling. And then I wake up and realize I’m not really falling, I’m just trippin’! Ha! Lauren Budd ’18 I am haunted by recurring dreams about injuring my teeth or having them fall out that are so vivid that I actually feel pain during the dream and wake up and have to convince myself that my teeth are actually still in place. It is horrifying.
8// MIRROR
Open to Interpretation: The Pop Science of Dreams The coolest facts about dreams for you to read before you hit FACT SHEET
By Nelly Mendoza-Mendoza
Even if you don’t remember your dreams, most of us dream several times a night. It is estimated that an average person will have about 100,000 dreams in their lifetime. People who are blind can dream, too, and only people with certain disorders can’t dream. Your first dreams in your sleep cycle are shorter than the ones at the end of your sleep cycle, which can be up to 60 minutes long. It is thought that other mammals that can achieve REM sleep can also dream.
Initially it was thought that dreams only occurred in the rapid eye movement stage of the sleep cycle. New evidence suggests that dreams also occur in the non-REM stages of sleep. These dreams often focus more on events that might have happened to you throughout the day, helping you make new connections with your past memories and consolidate new information, while scrubbing unimportant or irrelevant information from your memory. This happens because the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for emotions, and the hippocampus, the home of memories, are both active during REM sleep. When we dream, we experience emotions that are almost identical to the emotions that we feel while we are awake. For example, you might wake up feeling stressed out or angry if you are woken up during a vivid nightmare. While dreaming our body becomes paralyzed, which serves as our body’s protection from acting out what we are dreaming about. Still, certain REM disorders can cause people to sleep walk and/or act out their dreams.
the hay tonight.
One of the most common dreams is of a significant other cheating. For those that subscribe to the idea that dreams carry real world meaning, this dream has to do with the fear of being wronged or left alone. Another common recurring dream is of losing or cracking your teeth, the meaning of which can vary depending on what we consider to be the significance of our teeth. The symbolism of dreams in general can be interpreted in the context of our lives. For example, recurring nightmares can represent worry, confusion, sadness, guilt or fear of failure. The most commonly reported emotions experienced during dreams are anger, sadness and fear. This could be because dreams involving negative emotions tend to be more vivid and because our bodies react stressful scenarios as they would in real life, causing spikes in heart rate or blood pressure which help cement the dreams in memories. Men are more likely to have dreams involving violent scenes, while women tend to dream more about relationships and children have more nightmares because they haven’t developed the right tools to cope with emotions. Children might have more dreams involving monsters, potentially symbolizing the unknown.
Researchers don’t know exactly why dreams are forgotten so easily, but some have suggested that it is to keep our real memories and dreams separate and distinguishable. This way you won’t be confused with what you dreamt and what you lived during your waking hours. During REM sleep our body shuts down our memory creating systems, which might explain why we are more likely to remember dreams that we had before waking up. This is why sound sleepers are less likely to remember their dreams than those who wake several times a night. Some people report of dreaming about events that would later happen to them. Some claim that Abraham Lincoln dreamt of his assassination, and there have been reports of precognitive dreams about the Titanic catastrophe and 9/11. However, this might also be due to the fact that when something happens we often try to find evidence in hindsight, or real-life occurrences might trigger a memory of one of our dreams. Researchers don’t have enough evidence to rule out premonitions as a hoax or as purely coincidental, but what we do know is that our brain is always trying to make connections. When dreaming we cannot read or tell time. In fact, if you look at a clock in a dream, the hands will appear to be still. Since the invention of the color TV, the average number of people dreaming in color has increased.
Lucid dreaming is the ability to control one’s dreams. Usually, someone is able to achieve lucid dreaming if they know that they are dreaming, yet they are in REM sleep. The ability to have lucid dreams might be linked to being more introspective and having more gray matter in your brain. The Egyptians recorded the first lucid dreams more than 5,000 years ago. Tibetan Buddhist Monks use lucid dreaming on their path to enlightenment. During lucid dreaming, parts of your brain that would normally be off during sleep are on, most notably the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for self-awareness and working memory. Theories for the purpose of dreams include preparing for change, coping with trauma or loss and helping the brain solve problems that we couldn’t otherwise solve. Google, the DNA’s double helix spiral form and the periodic table first appeared in dreams of notable thinkers, Larry Page, James Watson and Dmitri Mendeleev, respectively. This may be because the prefrontal cortex, responsible for logic and reasoning, is inactive during sleep.