U.S. Campus Life

I have a dream

By Masako Yamada

My boyfriend has been taking a class in hypnosis this semester. This is a legitimate course taught at Harvard Medical School and the students are learning about hypnosis in as scientific a way possible. He was telling me that certain people are more "hypnotizable" than others and the students in the class have self-evaluated how susceptible they are to hypnosis. It turns out that all of the students in this particular class are resistant to being hypnotized, but the professor has often seen very hypnotizable students even at the medical school.

He asked me how often I tend to daydream and I told him probably less than 10 percent of the time. Apparently, those who are the best hypnosis subjects daydream almost all of the time. This doesn't mean that they can't function or that they don't do their work well. But they are able to imagine fantastic alternative scenarios while going about doing their daily chores. They are also able to immerse themselves in their daydreams without mistaking them for reality.

Based on what I've heard, I suspect that hypnosis will probably not work on me. I'm not a very analytical person (which makes me hypnotizable) but I'm not prone to reveries (which makes me unhypnotizable). I tend to operate by instinct, which I think is in between the above traits.

For the past few days, however, I think I've been getting closer to being a model hypnosis subject. That is to say, I've started to daydream more and more. This week, I went to Albany for a few days to interview for a job and immediately after I returned, I started to imagine my life there.

I've been interested in buying a home for years and the real estate market in Albany is about a third the price of similar homes in Boston, so I've been looking up real estate Web sites to check out homes I could buy. Apartment or single-family? Near the lab, near a farm or near the city center? Three bedrooms or four?

Why in the world would I need four bedrooms for myself? Well, I want a "music room" with a Steinway grand piano and 20 chairs to host group recitals with friends. I want a "computer room" with three or four computers chugging all the time. I want an "atelier" where I can spread out balls of yarn and pieces of fabric on a large table without having to clean up unfinished work. I want a "guest room" with its own bathroom that can sleep two adults and two children, so I can invite my friends with families to visit the countryside.

I've started to become interested in the prices of computers, pianos and cars. I've been checking out the Web sites of artist friends — painters, sculptors, pottery artists — whose works I would like to display in my living room. I've even started to worry whether I'd be able to fit a grand piano through the doors of the home I will buy.

These daydreams have been vivid and I've been trying to figure out why this has been the case. I think it's because, right now, my fantasies are close enough to reality that I know they might actually happen (I'm not dreaming about winning the lottery or the Nobel Prize) but distant enough that I can add idealistic details.

Until now, I've lived in the tiniest room in my apartment with three roommates. I have an 8-year-old computer, a digital piano and no car. Even by graduate student standards, I've been considered frugal and I've been happy living this way. It never really occurred to me that my living standard after graduate school would be different. But now that I can see the end of the tunnel, I've started to imagine the wonderful things that might be possible.

Never mind that I don't know whether the company will offer me the job. Never mind that I don't know what my salary would be. Never mind that I haven't figured out how to make the down payment. Never mind that I need to find a real estate broker, a lawyer, a house inspector and a house to buy. Never mind that I have to finish my thesis first ...

I've started to think about my life after graduate school. It is becoming more real to me. Now I wish that somebody can put me under a spell and make it all come true. Well, at least I think I'm becoming more hypnotizable!

Shukan ST: March 22, 2002

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