It Wasn't Even That Difficult At The Time

I really shouldn’t have dreams about upcoming calculus tests anymore  

It just goes to show just how much calculus you could do now if you had to.  

So, being a professional engineer and genius, it probably doesn't come as much of a shock to you to hear that I have done some advanced maths in my history.  This includes things like vector algebra, calculus, differential equations, and quantum physics.  It's true.  I couldn't do any of that crap now if I tried.  

One of these, in particular, I'm not 100% convinced I could really ever do.  One of the advanced calculus classes I took when I was in college.  I, for some reason, remember it being a late class, so probably a night course which was the only one available when I could attend.  It has since turned out to be 100% irrelevant to my career goals, but that didn't seem important at the time.  All I know is that I knew exactly how to solve the problems, with no understanding of what it was I was actually doing.  I passed the course, presumably with a decent grade, and went on with life, never having to do that nonsense again.  

See, engineering is so very much not about being able to plug the right numbers into an equation and solving for x to get the right answer.  Engineering (aside from a remarkable long-winded rant I often go into about engineering being the art and science of laziness) is all about fundamentally understanding why the world around you happens the way that it does and knowing how to change it to get better results.  Anybody can plug equations into a computer nowadays, but Knowing Where To Put The Chalk Mark is what makes someone an engineer.  So, the fact that I was able to get through an advanced math course in college having no earthly clue what I was actually doing apparently didn't sit well in my brain.  

To this day (well, strictly speaking, to at least some day last week, but I doubt it'll stop now), I have a recurring dream about that calc class.  I know that I didn't go to the class recently.  In reality, it's because I graduated years ago, but in my dreamland, it's because it was a night class that I kept forgetting to go to because I didn't have to go every day.  Combine the fact that I seem to have skipped that class recently, with the fact that I didn't actually know what the class was about, and we have a test coming up soon results in a feeling of panic that I'm going to fail the course.  This is annoying, and wakes me up.  

I've already passed the course.  I've graduated.  I'm a professional engineer now, and I never need to take a calc test or do math ever again.  Why does this still wake me up at night?