Dream Journal: The Class I Couldn’t Teach

Dreamed on the night of Monday, 19 October 2026 · Recorded on Tuesday, 20 October 2026

An unsettling dream about a classroom full of people waiting for me, the things I couldn’t find, and the growing feeling that I was letting everyone down.

The dream

Last night, I had a nightmare about teaching my usual Smartphone Videography class.

In the dream, I had a class to teach, just like the classes I have taught so many times in real life. When I arrived, there were about 10 to 20 students in the room. They seemed very excited to be there. Everything appeared normal at first, except for one rather extraordinary detail.

Among the students was President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

He had come to attend my class, accompanied by three bodyguards.

Putin was seated at the side of the classroom, looking at me from an angle. The other students were sitting in ordinary seats, facing the front and looking towards me. It was a strange situation, but somehow, within the dream, this was simply the class I was supposed to teach.

The classroom itself was unfamiliar. I had never seen this place before. It was neither entirely indoors nor entirely outdoors. Part of it was open-air, while another part was enclosed. The walls were grey, and at the front of the room stood two shelving racks, one on the left and one on the right. There were various things on top of them.

I was supposed to begin teaching my usual smartphone videography lessons.

But then I discovered that my laptop was missing.

Or perhaps it was not working. I cannot quite remember which happened first. What I do remember clearly is that my laptop was unavailable, and my briefcase was missing too.

That was when everything began to fall apart.

I couldn’t teach anything

I tried to get the class going. I fumbled around, attempting to teach something from memory, hoping I could somehow get through the lesson without my usual equipment.

But I couldn’t.

My teaching depended on being able to demonstrate things. I needed to show videos, explain techniques through visual examples, and let the students see what I was talking about.

Without my laptop, I couldn’t show the videos I needed.

I tried to think of what I could teach off the cuff, relying entirely on what I could remember in my head. But somehow, my mind wasn’t cooperating either. I couldn’t organise my thoughts into a proper lesson.

I was standing in front of a room full of excited students, including the president of Russia, and I wasn’t teaching them anything at all.

The students just stared at me.

Nobody complained. Nobody said anything. They simply watched me struggle.

And that made me feel even worse.

I felt terribly guilty. I knew I was supposed to be teaching them, yet I couldn’t deliver what they had come for.

Eventually, I decided that I had to leave the classroom to look for my laptop and briefcase.

So I left.

The search took me into a corporate office building

As I went out searching for my missing belongings, the surroundings changed.

Instead of being in a school or training centre, I found myself moving through what seemed to be a large corporate office building.

There were more and more shelving racks, office cubicles and different sections of the building. The farther I went, the more it felt like I was wandering through a maze of offices rather than looking for something in a classroom.

I didn’t know exactly where I was.

I just knew I needed to find my laptop and briefcase.

I searched for what felt like a long time. Meanwhile, the students were still back in the classroom, waiting for me.

I began to feel guilty about leaving them alone for so long. I had gone out to find the things I needed to teach, but in doing so, I had abandoned the very people I was supposed to be teaching.

I eventually returned to the classroom.

To my surprise, everyone was still there.

They were waiting for me.

Nobody was complaining or showing any obvious signs of anger. They hadn’t walked out or demanded an explanation.

They were simply sitting there, waiting patiently for the lesson to continue.

Yet I felt no real relief.

My whole body felt uneasy. I remember feeling very cold, as though the guilt had spread through my entire body.

I had returned, but I still had neither my laptop nor my briefcase.

And I still couldn’t teach.

I left the classroom a second time

I tried again to teach from memory, hoping I could somehow improvise my way through the situation.

But the problem remained the same.

I needed to show videos. I needed to demonstrate things. I couldn’t simply stand there and talk about smartphone videography without the visual examples that were essential to the lesson.

Nothing was working.

I couldn’t get the class moving, and I couldn’t find a way around the problem.

Eventually, I left the classroom for a second time to continue searching.

The morning dragged on, and before I knew it, it was almost lunchtime.

The whole situation seemed to be stretching endlessly. I had spent so much time trying to find my missing belongings that I had barely taught anything.

And all the while, the students were waiting.

Putin was gone. His three bodyguards remained.

After lunchtime, I returned to the classroom again.

This time, something had changed.

President Putin had left.

He was no longer sitting at the side of the room, watching me teach. In his place was an empty chair.

His three bodyguards, however, were still there.

Two of them were seated at the side of the classroom, with the empty chair between them where Putin had been sitting.

The third bodyguard, a woman, was seated among the other students.

I looked at the two bodyguards sitting beside the empty chair and wondered where Putin had gone.

I approached them and asked where he was.

I also wanted to know whether I could continue with the class even though Putin was no longer there. Perhaps, I thought, the bodyguards could take notes on his behalf and pass them to him.

So I tried to explain my questions to the two men.

But they didn’t understand me.

They couldn’t understand English.

I was already struggling to conduct my class, and now I couldn’t even communicate with two of the people I needed to speak to.

Then, from behind me, the female bodyguard stood up.

Unlike the two men, she could speak English.

She spoke to me in a very calm, friendly manner. There was no hostility in her voice, no impatience and no indication that she was upset with me.

She explained that they would take notes and pass them to Putin, but he would not be coming back.

That was it.

Putin had left, and his bodyguards would take care of passing the notes to him.

For a moment, I felt good.

At least someone understood me. At least someone was willing to help. I no longer had to worry about whether Putin would return to the classroom.

But the relief was short-lived.

Because my laptop and briefcase were still missing.

I still had nothing to present to the class.

I still couldn’t teach properly.

And I still felt terribly guilty.

Everyone was being nice to me, but I felt I had let them down

What made the situation particularly uncomfortable was that nobody seemed to be treating me badly.

The students had been patient with me all along. Even after I had left the classroom twice, they were still waiting.

The female bodyguard had spoken to me kindly and offered a practical solution for passing notes to Putin.

Nobody had shouted at me. Nobody had openly criticised me. Nobody had demanded that I explain myself.

Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed them.

I felt guilty precisely because they were being so good to me.

I had a responsibility to teach them, and I wasn’t fulfilling it. They had given me their time, and I wasn’t giving them what they had come for.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I had nothing to show them.

And there was another detail that made the whole situation even more uncomfortable.

Among the students were people I knew in real life. They were relatively senior people, people who held important positions or whose opinions mattered to me.

One of them was someone who had been very critical of what I do.

So there I was, standing in front of a group that included people I knew, people I respected, and someone who was already critical of my work.

And I couldn’t even conduct my own class.

I wondered what they were thinking as they watched me struggle.

They weren’t saying anything, but I couldn’t help feeling that they must have been judging me.

The silence in the room seemed to make the guilt worse.

The day dragged on until almost five o’clock

The nightmare continued for what felt like the entire day.

It was as though the hours kept passing, but I remained stuck in the same situation. I couldn’t find my laptop. I couldn’t find my briefcase. I couldn’t get the class going.

The students had come to learn, but I had barely taught them anything.

Eventually, it was almost five in the afternoon.

By then, I began thinking that perhaps I should stop trying to pretend that everything was going to work out and simply tell the truth.

I thought about explaining to the students that I wasn’t properly prepared because my laptop and briefcase were missing.

I could tell them that this was a three-day course, and that we still had two more days ahead of us.

Perhaps I could start again the following morning.

I could begin the course afresh, prepare properly, and make sure they wouldn’t miss out on anything.

I imagined telling them something along these lines:

As you can see, I’m not properly prepared today because I’ve lost my briefcase and laptop. Since this is a three-day course and we still have two more days, I’ll start all over again tomorrow. Don’t worry. You’re not going to miss out on anything.

I thought the students might be happy to hear that.

But even as I imagined telling them the truth, I couldn’t be sure how they would really react.

Perhaps they would be understanding and accept my explanation.

Perhaps they would smile at me and tell me it was all right.

Or perhaps they would only appear happy in front of me.

Maybe, behind my back, they would complain about the way I had conducted the class. Maybe they would decide that I wasn’t a good trainer. Maybe they wouldn’t return the next day.

I didn’t know.

I could only imagine what they might be thinking.

And that uncertainty made me feel guilty all over again.

I wanted to make things right, but I couldn’t control what they thought of me.

I could only hope that they would give me another chance.

Then the students left, and I woke up

The day had been long and exhausting.

I had spent hours trying to find my laptop and briefcase, leaving and returning to the classroom, attempting to teach without the tools I needed, and worrying about what everyone thought of me.

President Putin had left, leaving behind his empty chair and three bodyguards. The female bodyguard had been kind and helpful. The students had waited patiently.

But I had still been unable to teach the class properly.

Eventually, the students left the classroom.

And then I woke up.

The nightmare was over, but I remembered the feeling it had left behind: the uneasiness, the coldness throughout my body, and that overwhelming sense of guilt.

I had been trying so hard to fulfil my responsibility to everyone in that room, yet everything I did seemed to fall short.

Even when people were patient with me, I couldn’t stop feeling that I had disappointed them.

That was the nightmare.

My reflection: What might this dream mean?

I don’t think this dream needs to be interpreted as a prediction of what will happen in my real life. But there is an important connection I can see.

I have a three-day Smartphone Videography class coming up at the end of October. I haven’t taught a class for about four months, and I already feel unprepared.

The dream may be bringing that anxiety to the surface in an exaggerated form.

In real life, I am worried about whether I can deliver a good class. In the dream, that worry becomes a nightmare in which I lose the very tools I need to teach, cannot rely on my memory, and spend the entire day trying to recover from a situation I cannot control.

The missing laptop and briefcase may represent my fear of not having what I need when it matters. I know how to teach smartphone videography, but I may be worried that my knowledge, materials or preparation will not be sufficient when I stand in front of a class again.

The silent students and the people who know me may represent the pressure I feel to live up to other people’s expectations. The presence of someone who has been critical of my work makes that pressure especially vivid. I may be imagining their judgement even when nobody has actually criticised me.

Putin’s presence may amplify the stakes. Instead of an ordinary class, I am teaching someone extraordinarily powerful and recognisable, accompanied by bodyguards. The dream turns an ordinary professional responsibility into an unusually high-pressure situation.

The students’ patience is another important detail. Nobody openly attacks me. The female bodyguard is even kind and helpful. Yet I continue to feel guilty. Perhaps the hardest part of the dream is not other people’s actual behaviour, but my inability to stop judging myself even when others are being understanding.

Finally, my idea of telling the truth and starting again the next day may point towards a practical way forward: acknowledging that I need to prepare, accepting that I cannot control every circumstance, and making a realistic plan rather than expecting myself to perform perfectly.

I don’t know whether all these interpretations are correct. A dream can combine current worries, memories and strange associations in ways that don’t have one definite meaning.

But I do know that the upcoming class is a real concern for me, and the dream seems closely connected to that concern.

Three things I want to take away from this dream

1. I need to prepare, not panic. If I feel unprepared, I can identify the actual gaps in my materials and teaching plan and work through them before the class.

2. I need to separate responsibility from guilt. Taking responsibility means doing what I reasonably can to serve my students. Feeling guilty for hours doesn’t make me better prepared.

3. I need to remember that I am returning after a break, not starting from zero. I have taught this subject many times before. Four months without teaching may mean I need a refresher, but it doesn’t erase my experience.

One question to carry with me

Am I afraid that I will genuinely be unable to teach my class, or am I more afraid that people will see me struggling and think less of me?

Perhaps the answer is both. But understanding the difference may help me prepare for the real class instead of spending the coming days worrying about the nightmare.