A few weeks ago I woke up from a strange dream: I have been logging into student health
lately to follow up on my physical, and in my dream our former Department Chair contacted me to say that he had received a notification from the system that I
had dropped out of the program. Everything was fine, I should just turn in my key.
Apparently I had pressed the wrong button,
and inadvertently unenrolled from graduate school. I couldn't believe such a snafu had occurred,
and explained to him, “No no, I’m not dropping out. I must have hit the wrong button.” He didn’t try to argue with me, and didn’t even
feel we needed to have a discussion. Just like that, he alerted me that the system had informed him of my decision and by clicking a button by mistake, notice was
considered given.
In my dream I kept explaining to him it wasn’t intentional, that I
had just accidently pressed the wrong button. I was neither
relieved nor upset, just surprised at the kafka-esque notion that a button
pressed by accident and without any intention on a seemingly unrelated website
had been interpreted as my leaving. Leaving seems like such a big, hard, challenging and dangerous taboo prospect: this was anti climactic to say the least.
