If you’ve ever been to school, odds are you’ve had the school dream. You know the one: You forgot there was a test or that you were even in that particular class. You can’t find your locker or, if you can, you fumble with the combination. Guess what: Teachers have these dreams, too.

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       All professions do, apparently — at least going by the readers who responded to my call for work-related nightmares.

       Colleen Anders taught in the Chesterfield County, Va., public school system. “Three weeks ago — right on schedule — I had my school anxiety dream,” she wrote.

       Colleen dreamed she’d come out of retirement. But as she prepared for school to start, she didn’t know which grade level she’d be teaching, couldn’t find the furniture or books to set up her classroom, and had forgotten how to write a lesson plan.

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       “I was in a real panic,” wrote Colleen, of North Chesterfield, Va. “I was so relieved to awaken in the morning and realize that I had once again revisited my school anxiety dream. Perhaps, with the dream out of my system for this school year, I can relax — until next August!”

       The District’s Pallavi Kumar has taught at American University’s School of Communication for nearly 20 years, but she still dreams she’s in front of a class with nothing prepared.

       “And I mean nothing: no PowerPoint, no class activity, no exam, not even a topic area,” Pallavi wrote. “I know the genesis of this nightmare: The very first class I ever taught in January 2002, I ran out of material after 40 minutes .？.？. of a 2.5-hour block. It never happened again but the nightmare continues.”

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       It’s been 40 years since Vicki Storrs of Hamilton, Va., last waited tables. You can take the waitress out of the restaurant, but you can’t take the restaurant out of the waitress.

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       In Vicki’s work dream, she’s in an unfamiliar eatery. “The people are pouring in and no one will tell me what tables are ‘mine,’？” she wrote. When she is told about her tables, she’s unfamiliar with the restaurant’s numbering system.

       “So I just wander around trying to find people who are waiting and haven’t been helped yet,” Vicki wrote. “I have had it several times a year for all these years and they continue to this day. Maybe just telling you about it will be the catharsis I need to end them!”

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       Stuart J. Kaswell of Potomac, Md., is a retired financial services attorney. He recently dreamed about that all-important law firm metric: the billable hour. His billable hours were at zero for the entire month.

       Wrote Stuart: “In this dream, one of my law partners wanted me to attend a law firm reception, but I told her that I needed to focus on my billable hours.”

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       The District’s Debra McDonald hasn’t been a meeting planner for over 25 years but she still dreams about hotels. “I go into the elevator and then I have to find my room, which I almost never can locate, forever wandering the corridors trying to find my room or the correct elevator to get there,” she wrote.

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       Mark O’Brien of Great Falls, Va., was a disc jockey back in the days when jocks picked their own music and played it on turntables. Selecting the perfect song and dropping the needle in the right spot was always a challenge.

       “My recurring dream is that the song on the air is running out and I don’t have a record on the second turntable to segue to,” he wrote. “I am still looking at the wall of thousands of records and I can’t pick one. Dead air looms, the disc jockey’s worst nightmare.”

       As an actor, Daniel Geske’s “frustration dreams” entail something going wrong on the stage.

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       “I will get to the theater and realize the title of this show doesn’t sound familiar,” wrote Daniel, of Kensington, Md. “I have no idea what the show is even about. As I’m getting in what I hope is my first costume backstage, I have no idea when my entrance is! If/when I do make it onstage, I have no idea what my blocking is, what my line is, what my cues are, or even if I have any lines at all this scene. And if there’s choreography, I don’t even know enough about what’s going on to ‘fake it’ decently in the back.”

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       Brian Jones of Alexandria, Va., is also a performer: a classically trained clarinetist. Ever since college, two dreams have haunted him: “I’m performing in an orchestra, but my front teeth are wobbly loose,” he wrote. “Or I don’t have the music for the piece we’re playing, and so I just make up my part. It’s nothing like what the composer wrote, but somehow no one — except the other clarinetist — notices.”

       In dreams, as in life: Fake it till you make it — or at least until you wake up.

       Twitter: @johnkelly

       For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.