I dreamed that I was on my way to take a college exam when I had some sort of run-in with three adolescent boys. They decided to follow me to my class and be a nuisance. They kept coming into the room and being disruptive, even getting violent, but the professor did little more than tell the boys that they needed to run along.
As I got ready to take my exam, I first had difficulty finding a pen, then I had just scraps of paper to write my responses.
For the first exam question I was was handed a small, spring-loaded contraption with gears to examine. After fiddling with it for a moment, I concluded that it was for ventilation panels on an apache helecopter to keep it from overheating: A release lever would spring the vents open, then they'd have to be cranked to be closed back up. I wrote a couple of sentances to this effect on a strip of paper.
I then received a sheet of paper with the next essay prompt: “One of the aliens that rescued E.T. slew and buried one of their kin. E.T. decided to forgive him. Write the dialog.” (I had watched an episode of Parasyte: The Grey (2024) before going to bed, which may have influenced this part of the dream.)
I was told I had 10 minutes left to complete my exam. At first I wasn't worried, but then I lost my pen again and it took a moment to find, and then I couldn't find the paper I'd been writing on among the scraps I had on my desk.
I then woke up feeling extremely stressed.