I was in a dark, oddly deserted apartment, where I noticed that there was no TV. I thought about my roommate, realizing that I’d seen her here only once, several days ago.

I was eating lunch at a picnic table with two boys I understood to be my friends, although they were ignoring me. Suddenly there was something I had to tell them. They didn’t listen at first, but I felt immensely gratified when I did get their full attention.

“I just had a vision or dream in which my major was hiking and backpacking,” I told them as though this were the most wondrous thing in the world, which to me it was, even as I mentally noted that I had not mentioned anything difficult, e.g., rafting. They seemed happy for me.

I asked the boy next to me for a tiny piece of the half chicken he’d just taken, but instead he gave me something from the scraps left behind. I felt distinctly unloved and unappreciated.

As in other dream, I recalled that I have a degree, and I was starting to realize that not only was my academic performance just as bad this time, but that I wasn’t getting the degree I seemed to want, in hiking and backpacking.

That will teach me to sign up for Road Scholar.