Final Exams, Hezbollah, and the Fight for Freedom

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about nightmares, beyond the fact that they bring to light anxieties increasingly childlike and fundamental, is the fact that they are based on concepts so wrought with theory, theory that I had not dreamt up even in more conscious states, that I wake with new philosophies, a new outlook on life.

I sometimes find myself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling after a night of mind bending dreams, wondering how long these concepts had been circulated through my mind, tumbling around like delicates on timed-dry.

As I drifted to sleep last night, I was taken back in time, landing in class at Marquette, fully immersed in a suffocating program to complete for a final exam (on which my graduation was precariously hinged). At one point in the dream, I was flooded with nostalgia as I stared at the computer screen in the lab, wondering how I had wronged God to cause him to not allow my program to compile after hours of debugging. I cursed the textbook helplessly slumped on the corner of the table, offering little more than generic examples and poorly executed attempts at object-oriented humor.

For what seemed like the hundredth time, I scanned the program for missed errors or incorrect syntax, almost assuredly a result of an omitted semi-colon or misspelled variable. In a desperate attempt for answers, I reread the assignment handed out in class. “In this assignment,” the handout read, “I hope not only to help your knowledge of programming, but to help the world as a whole.” Typical computer science teacher megalomania, I scoffed. “Your assignment is to use recursion in order to create a solution to the long-standing conflicts between Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine.”

Throughout my dream I remember the overriding emotion was anxiety and helplessness as I worked, perhaps even some anger towards the teacher for demanding the program be completed in 3 days when, in the past, we were given at least a week. When I awoke I stared wide-eyed into the dark, almost numbed by the metaphor I had just produced, the controversy I had just sparked. Had I really just subconsciously compared the project of a computer science major to the ideology of Hezbollah?

After contemplating the dream, I found it had a lot of truth. Like my peers, I had been born into a country with a predisposition for success and opportunity. In my sheltered 23 years, some of the most devastating things I have had to deal with have been the vexations of exams and other difficult-to-satiate expectations, as pathetic as that sounds. In a way, these vexations are my fight for freedom. Freedom from all-nighters, from nights in the lab, pushing me to tears. Freedom from the stress and pressure caused from overbearing councilors, expectations of high achievements. Like Hezbollah’s desire to push Israeli occupation from Lebanon, I too had a desire to dismantle the academic forces governing me.

In a way this dream brings to light what I feel are American ideals found rampant in this country: misguided beliefs that we are that all-seeing hero, the knight that can solve problems in the middle-east as simply as they can solve a homework assignment. Perhaps not only that we can solve it, but that it is even our assignment to solve to begin with. I find myself quick to judge the passions of these individuals, the beliefs they live (and kill) by. And yet I think in a lot of us there is a notion that we are somehow better, somehow more clairvoyant. Maybe deep down in all of us there is the idea that these problems really can be solved by for-loops and simple algorithms.

As the sun began to rise I turned over to look at my husband, hands curled up to his chest, eyelids fluttering ever so slightly. I noted he was drooling onto his pillow, drool which seemed to form the shape of a dove, a universal icon for peace. I stared at his slightly-open mouth, his protective position, and I imagined him waging wars, caught in battles, fighting for his beliefs. I wondered what he was dreaming about. Wondered if he too was finding freedom.

[callie].