Dream Ass

Tips for remembering your dreams

1. What you think about and do in the time right before you go to sleep affects not only what you dream but also your ability to remember your dreams. Have you ever had an important appointment the next morning and so you fell asleep worrying about oversleeping even though you set your alarm to go off early? Many times in those situations people end up waking up right before their alarm goes off. This is because if one sets an intention in the minutes before drifting off to sleep the mind will continue to focus on it even in the sleeping state. This week try, in a relaxed way (you don’t want to put too much pressure on yourself or you will wake up in the middle of the night), to fall asleep thinking about the dream diary assignment and how you are hoping to remember a dream. This simple step can double or triple your chances of waking up with some dream details!

2. It is also helpful to put a piece of paper (or a notepad) and a pen on top of your cell phone or alarm clock so that the first thing you see and think of when you awake is whether or not you can remember a dream. Dreams vanish quickly upon waking. Usually after two to three minutes they are already gone. What dream researchers recommend is to turn off the alarm and then lie still for a minute or two and try to go backwards through the plot of whatever you can remember from that night’s dream. The more you move around and do other things the more you forget. Once you have the basic storyline you should jot a few of the main details down and then you can come back to it later when you are more fully awake to type up all you can remember.

Those are the two main tips for remembering more dreams, and through the years I have seen them work for hundreds of students. There are always a few students who continue to struggle to recall anything though, so don’t feel bad if that turns out to be your case. Also, if you have a dream that is personal and you don’t feel comfortable sharing the details I understand. You can just state that in the dream diary and I will not take off points. Good luck on the project and I hope you catch some good ones!

The Dream Diary Activity

You will be keeping a dream diary for 6 nights, with your first entry covering Monday night and your last entry covering Saturday night. You will then turn in your typed diary project on Sunday before 11:55 PM along with your answers to the questions in part two as one word document or pdf file , and it should include the following components:

a) 6 entries, from a short paragraph to a page long depending on how much you remember, that sketch out the details from the previous night’s dream that you can piece together. I will trust that you are giving it your best shot, so if you remember nothing from that night then you can just write, “I do not remember anything” and that will count as that entry. Your final entries that you turn in will be typed, but you should have a notepad by your bed so you can jot down a few details as soon as you wake up because otherwise you will probably forget the dream. Get down as much as you can in the minute or two after you wake up before the memories fade away. Later you can use those details to type out a fuller entry that you will turn in.

Each entry should finish with a speculation of what you think that dream means, and then include the time you went to sleep, the time you woke up, and the total number of hours of sleep you got that night. Thus even if you do not remember your dream you will still need to capture how much sleep you got. On the last entry in your diary come up with the average number of hours sleep you got per night throughout this 6 night project. You can find your average by adding up all your sleep hours and dividing by 6. Write that average down after your final entry. This will let you know the level of sleep debt that you are carrying in your day-to day life.

b) The second part of this activity requires you to answer the following questions. Remember that these answers will be put on the same word document or pdf file that you used for your diary, and will be included after your final night’s entry from the diary.

1. What are the psychological theories that your textbook mentions that are currently used to explain why and how humans dream? List each theory and give a brief explanation of how it explains dreams.

2. What is your own personal theory of why we dream? Perhaps you agree with one of the theories covered in your textbook, or maybe you have your own perspective and have come up with an original theory. Make sure to justify your decision by explaining why the theory you propose is best. Your evidence could relate to objective facts or your own subjective experiences with dreams.

3. Your textbook discusses research that has been done on the benefits that sleep provides, and the problems that occur if people do not get enough sleep. In a paragraph or two use the textbook information to explain why getting enough sleep is important for physical and mental health, and make sure to provide some research findings and facts to back up your position.

4. After watching the four video clips posted in this week’s module on the importance of sleep offer a paragraph reflection (4-6 sentences minimum) on each of them. In each summary paragraph you should discuss what information you found most meaningful or relevant from that clip. Why? Finally, at the end write a final short paragraph to discuss how those clips relate to your own sleep life. In particular, do you think you are getting enough sleep on a regular basis? If so, what is your secret? If not, what could you change to do better? (Just to make sure you understand-- this question will have an answer with a total of 5 short paragraphs: those four summaries plus the personal reflection paragraph at the end).

My hope is that this will be a fun learning experience. There is no need to “cheat” and make up dreams if you cannot remember any. I will not penalize anyone for an inability to recall dreams, so even if you turn in a diary with 6 identical entries of “I couldn’t remember” you can still get full credit if you do a good job on all the other aspects of this paper. That said, 90% of students end up catching at least one dream during this project, and most catch considerably more if they try. I think that most of you will find that you will remember more than usual, if you just follow the tips I gave for remembering dreams. Remember, putting a note on top of your phone/alarm clock and falling asleep with a desire to remember the dream for the coming night are particularly helpful in aiding dream recall!

You will receive full credit for this assignment if you follow the directions above closely. Please email me during the assignment if you have further questions about what is required. Good luck and sweet dreams!

Below is an example of what I expect your diary to look like.

Sample Diary Entries

Monday, March 3rd: Last night I had a series of confusing dreams and images. At first I was back in my high school science class with a teacher I had never liked. It was my turn to present in class but I wasn’t prepared and I felt very anxious. I felt like I was about to be in trouble, but then the scene changed and I was at a bus station buying a ticket to somewhere but I can’t remember where. There was an old lady whispering something and my brother in line with me… Later on I remember being on a boat that was sinking and everybody was screaming.

I think this dream is just information processing because last night before I went to bed I was watching the movie Titanic. The part about high school kind of makes sense, as I never liked presenting in front of the class. I’m not sure what the bus station was all about.

Time to Bed: 11:30

Time I woke up: 7:30

Total Hours of Sleep: 8

Tuesday, March 4th: I tried but I couldn’t remember anything!

Time to Bed: 10:45

Time I woke up: 8:15

Total Hours of Sleep: 9 ½ hours

This first video clip is brief but I think it is very important because most of us are dealing with issues that relate to this problem. Do you take a screen to bed with you to unwind at the end of the day? If so that may be a problem that eventually will have some bad consequences. Hopefully the information outlined in this video clip will help remind us of how important it is to turn off the screens at a reasonable hour. This is video clip #1 for the purposes of part B, question 4 in your dream diary packet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR9FCkUMBJw

These next two clips discusses important research that has been done on the importance of sleep for physical and mental health.  They relate to some of your quiz questions this week,  and also to your dream diary project where you are tracking how much sleep you get each night. For question 4 in part B of your dream diary project where you have to respond to each of the 4 video clips you can treat these as clip #3 and clip #4. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-8b99rGpkM&t=2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNL2VTazjPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud80xasSYXg