Everyone has dreams, whether they remember them or not, and South students are no exception. The Oracle spoke to various students regarding their experiences with dreams, and what these dreams may say about their lives. All quotes featured are from an anonymous Oracle survey.

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You’re late for class, again. Speed walking to first period, you expect to hear Dr. Shellard’s cheery voice over the intercom for morning announcements. That’s when you realize Dr. Shellard is not reading the announcements but is singing them in an opera voice. Not to mention, your math teacher just rollerbladed past you wearing a fake moustache. It’s not until you finally reach your class that you feel the hot blush rise in your cheeks as it dawns on you… you’re not wearing pants.

Luckily, all it takes is a pinch to wakeup from an embarrassing dream like that. According to Peter Masciopinto, psychology and Brain Studies teacher, dreams are manifestations of different things happening in life.

“Usually dreams are associated with things that are occurring in our lives, and so, we have certain events that are taking place in our lives, some good, some bad,” he said.  “Many times, it can be a conflict that we have and, because of that, people can have certain types of dreams.  There could be a certain theme that seems to come up in a dream.”

Throughout the night, the brain goes through different stages of sleep.  Masciopinto explained that there are four cycles of sleep that the brain experiences during the night. The stages get longer as the night progresses.  Although there are four stages of sleep, most dreams occur during one stage known as the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep.

“If you want to see if someone is dreaming, you push back their eyelids, [and if] their eyes are fluttering up and down, then they are in the REM stage of sleep,” Masciopinto explained. “We probably go through that five times during the night. A lot of people say they don’t dream, but they actually do dream. [REM] is the time people remember their dreams the best.”

According to Masciopinto, this time adds up; people spend one-third of their lifetime sleeping on average.

For centuries, psychologists have come up with various explanations for the phenomenon of dreaming. According to Masciopinto, the most well known theories come from psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

“There’s a number of theories that are out there,” Masciopinto stated. “We need to take more of an eclectic approach.”

A percentage of students at South would agree with Freud’s approach to dreaming. According to an Oracle-conducted survey of 200 students, 68 percent of students believe that dreams have significant meaning to observable behavior.

One of these students is junior Petar Zumbelev, who has been fascinated with dreams ever since he saw a History Channel special on dreams in eighth grade. After watching the program, Zumbelev started reading books on dreaming and discovered something called a ‘dream journal’. According to Zumbelev, the journal is for recording dreams in an attempt to better remember them.

“It was just interesting to go back [in the dream journal] and look at the past dreams you’ve had and it was just like, ‘Oh wow, that’s pretty cool,’” Zumbelev explained.

Zumbelev also explained that a dream journal can help a person control their dreams. This phenomenon is known as lucid dreaming.

“After you start writing your dreams down, you become more conscious of them,” Zumbelev stated. “The main thing about [lucid dreaming] is that the more you think about it and the more you consciously try to remember your dreams, the more subconsciously your mind will start to realize you’re dreaming while in a dream. Then when you do realize you’re dreaming it’s really cool because you can do anything.”

According to the same Oracle-conducted survey, while 79 percent of South students report having dreams on a regular basis, only 10 percent of students are always aware that they are dreaming.

Zumbelev claims that the benefits of dreaming are endless, especially when a person learns to dream lucidly.

“[The best part of lucid dreaming is] the fact that you can control your dreams and the fact that you can go anywhere,” Zumbelev said. “For example, there’s no restrictions on you when you’re dreaming. You can fly, you can go to Paris, you can do whatever. It’s about how much imagination you have.”