Question: Having wanted to enter the gates of the Ivory Tower since the tender age of 8 (ask my parents -- strange but true!), I have now supposedly achieved my lifetime goal. I am a tenure-track assistant professor at Large Research University with Solid Reputation. And I'm miserable.

None of the faculty members even noticed that I arrived in town, much less invited me to lunch. Parking is much more expensive than when I was a grad student and much harder to find. I'm not teaching any classes within my area of interest, and I've been assigned courses that were never mentioned in the interview. Support staff are surly, unhelpful, and often downright mean. The pay is low, the cost of living high.

And my tribulations are met with sympathetic yet strangely gleeful laughter from my elder peers.

After only a couple of months, I question whether I want to do this at all. I find myself looking at the job listings again, thinking perhaps somewhere else will be different, better. Otherwise, perhaps my love of and commitment to research, teaching, and service simply are not enough to survive.

Answer: Ms. Mentor salutes you for winning a big-name job without having to twist slowly in the wind or threaten lawsuits or demand a recount. She also notes that you do not seem afflicted, as many tenure trackers are today, with a kind of survivor guilt: "Why was I lucky, while thousands like me will never have academic jobs?"

Of course, some of them are reading this column and thinking "Ungrateful wretch," while they cobble together adjunct positions at $2,000 a course, make cross-country moves for one-year jobs, and need no parking privileges since they can't afford cars. Their diplomas languish unopened in their cardboard mailing tubes.

Your problem is very different, and yours is one of several letters Ms. Mentor received this month from Precocious Burnouts -- new faculty members who do not want to wait until midlife to feel weary, sad, angry, and bitter. They want it now. But Ms. Mentor urges compassion and patience for life's winners and also-rans alike.

All professions put their newbies through unpleasant and disillusioning apprenticeships, with low pay, snarly coworkers, wildly inappropriate assignments, and bad parking. And all new job holders make horrific mistakes.

An exasperated telemarketer in Ms. Mentor's circle, for instance, once ordered a long-term and valued customer to "Please pay promptly, peckerhead." A neophyte pizza maker ruined a $600 industrial-strength cheese grater. Ms. Mentor has even met a brand-new hospital nurse who lost a patient's head. "Dang, I know I put it down somewhere," she told her boss.

Now you may bore, annoy, or mislead your students now and then, but at the end of the term they'll still have their heads. And so will you, for many temporary annoyances will wither away if you persevere. You'll be taken more seriously as you grow older -- and if you're really canny, you may be able to negotiate your own parking space.

"All right, all right, I know I can teach baby-level sociology now, and I know I can fake being an expert, as long as I know more than my audience," you complain. "But I didn't become an academic so I could ..." So you could what?

By learning to teach unfamiliar subjects, you are in fact pursuing the life of the mind. You are using your unique opportunity. You are in a profession where you are required to think.

Meanwhile, though, Ms. Mentor wonders about your interactions with your "elder colleagues." Are you perhaps being overly -- well, vocal about the autumn of your discontent?

Their "sympathetic yet strangely gleeful laughter" may be a form of welcoming you, tentatively, to the department caucus of malcontents. Every community has them -- the naysayers who grouse about every change, cite high standards, praise each others' fine minds, and rarely publish. At a research university, one must be cordial to them -- but not join them.

Other elders may listen eagerly to your complaints because they think you are hopelessly silly. They can't wait to see what you do next.

And so Ms. Mentor urges you to comport yourself with dignity and respect, however silly or rude your colleagues may sometimes seem, and however irritating the local customs may be. Fred and Freda Family may love living in the small town you find provincial, and Melvin Macho may relish the daily challenge of wresting a parking space from other commuters. You may know someone like Elegant Eleanor, a sports loather all her life, who crowed for weeks about beating her school's quarterback to a choice parking place. It was the highlight of her semester.

In short, you can do much to create a stimulating environment for yourself. Invite colleagues to lunch, ask them about department lore, and chuckle appreciatively, no matter what they say. For your academic role model, choose Socrates ("the wisest person is the one who knows nothing") rather than Alexander the Great ("I don't have any more worlds to conquer. Boo hoo!") Ms. Mentor, who went to school with both of them, assures you that Socrates was a much better party animal.

Finally, you are too young and too new to be seized with existential angst: "Is this all there is?"

It isn't.

Question: Sometimes I blow my top about the offensive and ridiculous comments made by senior faculty members in our department meetings. But I know I'm untenured and unschooled in the ways of academe, and I really ought to be quiet until I learn more. Should I chew on rough taffy to keep my mouth shut?

Answer: Yes.

SAGE READERS: Both malefactors and miscreants appear in Ms. Mentor's mailbag of late. An art professor reports on a genuinely disruptive, even dangerous, student, and has had no support from her bosses. Ms. Mentor welcomes "how I dealt with such crises" communications from her audience. She also finds that this is a season for frauds, in which impostors are claiming post-docs and Ph.D.'s they do not possess. Bad tempers are flaring. Some of us are becoming distinctly uncivil.

Ms. Mentor reminds readers that certain subjects should be off limits in professional conversations. Uninvited offers of copulation are always rude. Comments on weight or eating habits ("you're not eating enough!" or "watch those calories!") are invasions of privacy. Diet talk is boring. Compliments on clothing, if made at all, should be pleasant and innocuous. (Ms. Mentor will permit, "Nice tie," but not "Woo hoo! Love the way your pants hug your tight butt!")

As the job interview season progresses, Ms. Mentor exhorts would-be employers to treat candidates with respect and generosity. Reimburse them promptly, do not ask illegal questions, and never snicker. You were once naïve and awkward, too.

As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes gossip and unusual queries not answered by other learned worthies on this site. Other columnists do cover organizing one's vita, moving up in the academic hierarchy, and handling references. Ms. Mentor is most interested in the surprising, the psychological, the tempestuous, and the comical. She can rarely answer letters personally, but does respond to most of them in various ways in her monthly column.

All communications are confidential, and the identity of letter-writers is always masked. Ms. Mentor does not read and tell.