It (doesn't) pay off!

Last night I had a nightmare. It's been a recurring theme for 20 years: I'm sitting in a classroom, maths problems are being handed out - and I can't solve a single one. Dreams, they say, are messages from the subconscious. But what do they mean? There are various theories, two of the most popular go like this:
a) In dreams we process our experiences.
b) In dreams we process our unconscious fears.

In my case, we have a + b. When my head is asleep, my greatest fears and my worst experiences form a drama in the depths of my subconscious. Because my standard dream is based on true events. There is hardly anything in my life that I remember better than my A-level maths exam - a five-hour exam sometime in spring 1995. Our teacher was a cold-hearted man with the air of a camp warden. The exam paper was handed out and there were five problems on it. One was curve calculations, something I could actually do, but not this time; then vectors - that was hopeless anyway; then something to do with integral calculations and equations that seemed harmless, but I wouldn't have understood even if I had seen the complete solution; and then the asterisk task, an additional thing for the highly gifted in the field of imaginary numbers.

«It's best to take up a profession where you don't have to calculate.»

I turned the sheet over, hoping to find the easier tasks on the back. Nothing. It wasn't that I hadn't learnt, it was more that I couldn't do anything. For the next few hours, I had plenty of time to think about life - and about dying. I knew that I would have to repeat the A-levels and therefore also the maths exam. Like the Greek prankster Sisyphus, who believed he could cheat death and was punished with eternal life, I saw myself despairing over unsolvable maths problems for the rest of my life. The allegorical depth of the situation was overwhelming.
What followed was neither beautiful nor honourable, but true: Nina T., who had already solved the star problem, was sitting in front of me. If I leant very far forwards, I could catch a glimpse of it. I started to copy down her solution. Suddenly she noticed me and slid a piece of paper over her solution. I don't know what happened to Nina T., I never saw her again after her A-levels, but I'm pretty sure the gods didn't mean well for her. Three weeks later, I wasn't charged with cheating, but was told that I had achieved the required minimum score thanks to the half-finished star assignment. At the graduation ceremony, I wanted to kiss the camp counsellor with happiness. He said goodbye to me with the words: It's best if you take up a profession where you don't have to do the maths. I have two comments on this. Firstly, sometimes dirty tricks and nasty feints will help you. Secondly, the tasks you don't take on will follow you into your dreams.

To the author:

Mikael Krogerus is an author and journalist. The Finn is the father of a daughter and a son, lives in Biel and writes regularly for the Swiss parents' magazine Fritz+Fränzi and other Swiss media.