Question: I'm a young assistant professor in a very collegial department of 30 people. For my wedding next year, I'm wondering: Who from my department should I invite? Everybody? Nobody? Only the people I'm closest to? The issue is serious, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, since these people will eventually be voting on me for tenure. I want my good friends there, but inviting everybody is a bit of a stretch. What to do?

Question: I got lucky. Because my field is hot this year, I got a dozen interviews at the Modern Language Association convention. But I have friends who haven't done nearly as well, and I dread their questions. I don't want to make others feel bad, or have them envy me, or tempt fate by making too much of my good fortune.

Answer: If Ms. Mentor has any young, idealistic readers, no doubt they'll be shocked by what these two epistles reveal. Yes, academics can succumb to the same churlish emotions that normal people do -- greed, lust, blood-boiling envy. Some professors are also vain, and many are gluttonous.

And some of the most secure senior professors even flaunt their nasty little drives in public, behaving like Machiavelli, Casanova, or Beavis and Butt-Head.

In or out of the ivory tower, there are in and out groups, winners and oafs. Being hired and being tenured are not unlike courtship and marriage. The parties have a nervous initial meeting, and after a while they agree to a match, despite the risks. And then everyone with a stake is expected to show up to ratify the deal -- which brings Ms. Mentor to the who-gets-invited-to-the-wedding conundrum.

Ms. Mentor's correspondent -- call her "Freda Fiancee" -- can, of course, opt to be married out of town, and send announcements. Or she can elope. Or she can politely announce that the actual wedding ceremony will be a private occasion, with only immediate family and very-long-term friends.

She can also graciously and cleverly involve university people in the whole shebang. She can hire an art-department student to design the invitations; a music-department combo to play madrigals; and a hotel- and restaurant-management cadre to cater and serve at the reception -- to which Freda must invite everyone, including department secretaries.

If she invites some and not others, everyone will be abuzz. Some will be exalted and others insulted. Those who aren't worrying about clothes and gifts will resent and envy those who are. And no one will forget, ever.

They'll be far less troubled if the reception is not lavish. As Miss Manners wrote in 1982: "One's wedding should be a heightened version of one's best social life, not an occasion for people to attempt to play grand and unfamiliar parts in a fantasy play" (Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Budget Book Service, 1997).

Especially for a young couple starting out, an earnest and unpretentious bash, even a potluck or picnic, is far more engaging than an overblown show for a favored few. ("If her family's so rich, why does she even need an academic job?")

Inviting everyone, Ms. Mentor concludes, is the only professional thing for Freda to do. At tenure time, Freda's teaching, service, and publications will be judged -- but everyone who votes will also remember that she gave them a chance to feel warm, welcome, and well-fed.

Academics do have hearts, and tummies.

As for "Wanda Winner," the sought-after job candidate, Ms. Mentor must begin by scolding her. Wanda should never go about attributing her success to mere luck. Women do that much too often.

Instead, Ms. Mentor assigns Wanda to practice these words, every day in front of her mirror: "I am rightly rewarded for my achievements and my talents. I am magnificent." Being a poster child for high self-esteem is good.

Ms. Mentor also observes that a letter like Wanda Winner's -- how can I stay friends with my competitors? -- could come only from a woman. Few men worry about the feelings of Lucy or Larry Loser. Boys who've competed all their lives to ride shotgun in the car, grab the drumstick instead of the yucky neckbone, and siphon the teacher's attention away from the good little girls -- are rarely ambivalent when they win.

(Ms. Mentor welcomes the snide communiqués she knows she'll get on this subject, and also directs interested readers to Valerie Miner and Helen E. Longino's Competition: A Feminist Taboo? Feminist Press, 1987.)

But what should guilt-ridden Wanda do, faced with the sad eyes and droopy visages of the Losers?

Ms. Mentor decrees that it is easy to be a gracious winner -- to recite one's good news calmly, to encourage others, and even to offer help in a questioning, it's-OK-if-you-refuse way (Not "Let me see what you might be doing wrong with your cover letter" but "Would you like to see my cover letter?").

When Wanda wants to exult, she should do so only with non-competitors. That's why every academic must have at least some normal, non-academic friends and family members.

Meanwhile, Lucy and Larry also have responsibilities to Wanda, if they want to remain friends. They must resist the overwhelming temptation to backbite ("I could've had a lot of interviews, too, if I'd sucked up to . . . "). They must suck up their envy and congratulate Wanda warmly. Ms. Mentor suggests they use tennis pros Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, friendly rivals for more than a decade, as their models.

And finally, the Losers -- like Freda -- must be canny. No one can know exactly what the future holds, but Ms. Mentor is sure that some of the people to whom you are nice today will be in a position to hire you, tenure you, give you raises, attend your wedding, or even marry you, in the future.

No sane person will ever risk pissing them off.

Hearing the Alarm

Question: I'm in a one-year job, and my boss -- a mediocre researcher -- recently called me into his office to tell me, "Don't compete with me." Since then he and our no-name colleagues have ignored or disparaged my publications and achievements. In this uneasy atmosphere, should I -- without badmouthing my current co-workers -- be looking for another job?

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: "Will you tell me what I'm doing wrong?" tops queries to Ms. Mentor in the past month. Her correspondents report that they haven't been interviewed, or haven't been hired, or haven't been tenured, or haven't been paid what they're worth (that includes virtually every academic, of course).

Ms. Mentor says, sighing, to all of them: Often you have done nothing wrong. Someone else has tickled the fancies of the search committee, caught the chair's eye, impressed the dean, or somehow gotten people in power to shell out big bucks. (That is, of course, the most amazing feat of all.)

But all that is idiosyncratic and often irrational. Ms. Mentor therefore exhorts her readers to concentrate on what they truly can control: their self-presentation through vitas, cover letters, e-mail messages and Web sites, telephone calls, interviews, and follow-up letters. Never apologize. Never misspell. Be brilliant, charming, and accomplished.

Ms. Mentor also advises fledgling academics to read her tome (listed below) and the other columns on this site.