Question (from "Melissa"): My university has a prestigious undergraduate research program for seniors. Only a handful of students are chosen each year, and advising one of the scholars is viewed very favorably in promotion decisions. The program is celebrated with a year-end formal banquet, to which the seniors bring their families and significant others, and faculty advisers bring their spouses. The event is a who's who for our teacup universe.

Junior selectees for next year's program are also invited to the banquet, along with their faculty mentors but neither the juniors nor their mentors are allowed to bring companions. That creates a very awkward situation in the case of a young professor advising a student of the opposite sex.

The advisers sit with their students, and with the formal dress and the presence of so many couples, it's difficult to avoid the illusion that one is on a bizarre sort of date. When I was a new assistant professor, I handled the problem by dressing in my dowdiest, most mother-of-the-bride formal attire, complete with stern librarian glasses, and yet it was still an uncomfortable evening. In retrospect, I think it would have been better to disregard the formal dress code and wear a nicely tailored black pantsuit, or not go at all.

Time has passed, I now have tenure, and the situation has presented itself again. I'm a little grayer now and unlikely to be mistaken for a 20-something. I may just not go. However, I wonder if I have a responsibility to the young faculty members who follow me. Should I point out the awkwardness to the administration and ask that all professors be allowed to bring their spouses or partners?

Answer: Despite her infinite wisdom, Ms. Mentor is not quite sure what is gnawing at you. It's not the inequality, evidently -- that the seniors who have finished the program get to bring a claque of friends and family, while juniors starting out have to make do with . . .

Aha.

What's irking you is that you must attend the formal banquet, formally dressed, and sit with your student, also formally dressed, who may be of a different gender. And so -- it may look like you've got a prom date with a younger guy, and you would like to bring along your spouse to smack down that evil impression.

Of course you've got to "dance with them what brung you," as the late Molly Ivins used to say, but fortunately this event is not a dance. Nor is it a hoedown or a rave. All you're obliged to do, it seems, is dress up, be proud of your student, and be pleasant to all others. Ms. Mentor trusts that no corsage-pinnings are involved. Certainly different-colored name tags -- green for faculty members, yellow for students, red for fans -- can protect everyone from indelicate misapprehensions.

Other faculty women will also, of course, choose mother-of-the-bride-ish attire and eschew decolletage. Frumpy is better than foxy. Yes, yes, Ms. Mentor already hears young professors whining, "But I've worked hard to look this good" and "I'm very comfortable with my sexuality" -- to which Ms. Mentor responds: "This is about your students' achievements. It is not about your pulchritude."

If someone must behave in a provocative hot-hot-hot fashion, let it be the seniors' family and friends.

Perhaps your dismay comes from the assumptions of an earlier era, in which the personal and the professional were kept far apart. Men were perceived as businesslike. Women, if they appeared at all, were perceived as trophy wives or eye candy. If a man and a woman appeared together in public, they were assumed to be "great and good friends" -- not colleagues and equals at the office.

But those assumptions should be dead by now, Ms. Mentor believes. Women and men operate alongside each other in the Supreme Court, in locker room interviews, in Idaho and Iraq. Moreover, it should be universally acknowledged nowadays that the aura of romance, when it arises, is not confined to persons of opposite sexes. Two women, two men, who knows? Love can blossom anywhere -- and any configuration can look unseemly to the prurient mind.

But who is looking?

When Ms. Mentor was 14, of course, the whole world was watching because every 14-year-old is the center of the universe. If you have an acne attack, you know that everyone is instant-messaging all their friends, who are telling all their friends, and, by daybreak, mobs will have gathered on beaches from Guatemala to Guam, all chortling and hissing, "Missy's got a zitty!" That's the time when you really don't want to go to a banquet.

But once you're in your 20's, you realize that your classmates, like the Guamanians and Guatemalans, have their own obsessions. They may not even notice if you wear pajamas to class. By the time you're a woman of 40, you've started becoming invisible to store clerks and other individuals entranced by young things.

No one except the loons who post on RateMyProfessors.com cares if you're hot.

Which is Ms. Mentor's roundabout way of saying that you may be dwelling too much on what you think others may be thinking. A fixation on impressing others -- beyond the obvious need to get hired, tenured, and salaried -- is a recipe for chronic discontent and teeth gnashing.

The fear of other people's gossip can also chill us, making us awkward or timid when we should be celebrating and cavorting.

And so Ms. Mentor urges you not to be self-conscious at your formal banquet. Do not think of yourself as spouseless-for-an-evening, but as a prime professional showing off the success of your talented protégé. Preen and strut and make your student feel cherished. This is your chance to be a gracious mentor, a certified fount of wisdom, and an inspiration to all.

Ms. Mentor always likes doing that.

Question: My students, gripped by spring fever, are being obstreperous, boorish, and amorous -- as am I. Must I conceal my feelings and pretend to be a steady, immovable adult presence?

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor is pleased to announce that she has contracted with the learned worthies at the University of Pennsylvania Press to produce a second tome, tentatively entitled Ms. Mentor's Perfect Wisdom for the Academic Soul. For that volume and this column, she welcomes queries, rants, and gossip, especially on such subjects as adjuncting, lesbians and gays in academe, peculiar or troubled colleagues, and academic status symbols, unspoken rules, and special handshakes. Suggestions for summer reading are welcome, as are cautionary tales.

Ms. Mentor reminds readers that she rarely answers letters personally, but most are eventually handled in this column. All communications are confidential, and circumstances are always smudged. No one will know that you are the one with those dastardly imaginings.

Ms. Mentor directs eager readers to The Chronicle's forums as well as to her archive and her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com

Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.