Question (from "Delilah"): Because I play in a rock band in my non-school time, my professors claim I'm "not serious," and have threatened to yank my assistantship. I think what they're doing is a gatekeeping mechanism used by the socially retarded to maintain their awkward priesthood.

Question (from "José"): I'm a Spanish instructor (with an M.A.), an academic and cultural adviser with a student-services center, and a writer, genealogist, and photographer. And a flamenco dancer. What kind of university teaching job can I get?

Question (from "Trey"): Well, I finally got what every M.F.A. dreams of: a tenure-track job that'll support my writing. But it's at "Mediocre U.," in the middle of nowhere. Since I write for major magazines with tight deadlines and picky editors, I'm commuting two days a week to Mediocre City, and living the rest of the time in New York. But my department keeps scheduling stupid little meetings on days when I'm not on campus, and then people carp and backbite about my absences. Why don't they have some consideration?

Answer: Ms. Mentor sighs. So many people, so many talents, so much kvetching.

Ms. Mentor knows that it is not easy to be an artist in academia, where creative spirits often feel unloved and unrewarded. Their inspirations and their divine madnesses can't be easily shoehorned into 50- or 75-minute blocks, 15 weeks at a stretch, midterm in the middle, final at the end. Nor is it easy for creative spirits to assign a grade. What if a student practices assiduously but plays the piano without heart or feeling?

Yet many academics mistrust enthusiasm and those who purvey it. One of the unspoken purposes of graduate school is to socialize students into a cool, detached style -- an aura of objectivity.

Teresa, for instance, used to be an exuberant English major who told everyone, "I just love to read!" But by the end of her first semester in grad school, she'd learned that such effusions were horribly gushy and naïve. Now Teresa praises, soberly, "work that is theoretically sophisticated."

Now when she talks about literature, Teresa never smiles.

In Teresa's department, her role models are, like too many academics, a rather stuffy crew ("nerds," "bookworms," "pencil heads"). They went through school without any particular passion except a very strong sense of duty and a driving urge to accumulate A grades. As adults, such nose-to-the-grindstone professors are too often haunted by the fear that someone somewhere is having fun.

Delilah, the rocker, is especially suspect. Not only does she have an outside passion, but it's one that's loud and sensual. She may even get paid for it. She's not a monomaniac, tethered to lab or library, devoting her life to studying one diplomat, one compound, one cockroach. And so, -- though Delilah is also an outstanding student -- she makes traditional academics very nervous.

José, similarly, doesn't fit into a neat slot (traditionalists would call him "scattered"). He is a strange bright bird in a world where people are supposed to be monochromatic. If he chooses one field, and gets a Ph.D. in it, and narrowly directs his teaching and research toward that field -- he may be able to get a tenure-track job, five or six years from now. That will credential him to continue teaching and writing in the same fairly narrow groove.

Will that make José happy? Ms. Mentor doubts it. But if he tries to follow all his pursuits, he'll undoubtedly burn out. He will also make traditional academics very nervous.

Trey, though, will make them angry. When he doesn't show up for meetings to discuss requirements or hiring, Someone Else will wind up doing his work for him. Someone Else will have to handle advising his students while Trey is commuting or communing with his Muse. Someone Else will have to be cooperative and hard-working, while Trey is the prima donna.

That Someone Else -- who will be many people -- will resent Trey's failure to be "collegial," to share the workload and do the whole job for which he's been hired. In Ms. Mentor's blunt opinion, Trey is asking to be axed.

Another problem for artistic types in academia is their reputation. Racy stories abound about visiting artists who drank too much and groped everyone in sight, or the famous visiting writer who crouched for hours, naked, in the elevator (Beat poet Gregory Corso was notorious for that). But those are one-timers.

Artsy academics who want permanent jobs need to, somehow, "fit the institutional mold" and resist the temptation to experiment.

Brett, for instance, held his playwright classes in local bars ("a more relaxed atmosphere"), not noticing that students under 21 could not attend. And students who couldn't afford to buy drinks -- or who preferred not to drink -- were the victims of malicious stares from the management.

And then there have always been sculptors and painters who've encouraged students to "free themselves" from their clothes. Ms. Mentor knows of a poet who once stripped naked to illustrate his reaction to a Yeats poem.

Sexual harassment and peculiar behavior are not unique to "creative types," of course, but artists seeking permanent jobs in academia do need to take a few mundane steps:

• Be aware of the "institutional culture" and what's tolerated. Are there others who dress flamboyantly, use cuss words, or discuss intimate personal experiences in class? If there aren't, don't be the first.

• Read the faculty handbook, especially for the rules about teacher-student interactions, and especially if you're in a church-related school.

• Try to get a clear, written job description -- what you're expected to teach, what or how much you're expected to publish, and what kind of committee and department service work is expected of you. Will you be evaluated as an academic (who must publish) or as a practitioner (who must create or perform)?

• Find out what level of artistic success is expected. Joanne, for instance, knew that she had to have her prints exhibited, but no one told her that only juried shows "counted." At tenure time, her small regional shows were tossed aside, and she was said to lack a "serious professional reputation."

• Be aware of others' egos. If your department colleagues are known only locally, they may be embittered souls who won't be pleased if you brag that you've been invited to speak, read, or perform in Japan or Brazil or South Africa. Watch out for envy and revenge.

• Have an adult social life. Never have sex with students.

• Don't whine. It is a sad truth that the world does not really care whether you ever compose a concerto or paint a work of genius. You must generate your own drive and your own supports.

As for Ms. Mentor's correspondents: Trey may decide that academia is not the best way to support his writing career. Delilah may get a recording deal, and José may decide that academia is too narrow a floor for his dancing feet.

Tenure is a great prize, but for some artistic souls, it can be a prison. If you dread your job, and if you never laugh, and if, when you try to clear your mental pathways for the Muse, you imagine yourself in a never-ending committee meeting discussing six intricate and slightly different possible course-requirement lists for a 15-credit minor in aesthetics, philosophy, and critical and cultural theory ... Ms. Mentor has only one piece of advice: Head for the hills.

Question: I've been invited to apply for a fancy job at an elite school that will give me a 30-per-cent raise, higher-caliber students, and a better library. But it will also mean colder weather, chilly manners, and icy colleagues who hate each other. Do I dare stay at my mid-level state university, where everyone works together harmoniously? And if I do, will people laugh at me for turning down a prestigious plum? And if they do, should I say, "So what?"

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: "You are one funny cookie," said one recent missive to Ms. Mentor. But everyone else has been beseeching Ms. Mentor for an Oracular Pronouncement on this problem: "When do I tell the hiring committee that I have a job-hunting partner?"

While the best time is usually during an on-campus visit (and not before that), Ms. Mentor directs the urgently worried to other columnists on this site (search for "Dual Careers") and to Constance Coiner and Diana Hume George's excellent book, The Family Track. Help is nigh.