(from "Egbert"): I have recurring nightmares that somehow I am not doing enough and that other people are accumulating more or better publications. This isn't particularly pleasant. How many papers do I have to write before this stops?

Question: (from "Frieda"): Why won't my dissertation director treat me like a grownup? When I see him at conferences, he acts as if he's patting a little kid on the head and sending me off to the movies.

Question: (from "Gerald"): Why are some hiring departments so insensitive? I just got rejected with a form postcard. Now everyone using the mailroom knows my real name: "Loser."

Question: (from "Hilda"): My mentor, a brilliant woman who may rival even Ms. Mentor in her acumen, is pushing me to apply for jobs only in the top programs in my field. But those are all far from where I want to live, with my partner. My mentor says I must not de-prioritize my career for a relationship, as so many women do -- but my partner wants me back home, living with her. How do I choose between a gifted mentor and a cherished partner?

Question: (from "Imogene"): Recently I was up for a tenure-track position at a major research university. I found out who'd been hired when "Wanda Winner," the successful person (whom I know only via e-mail), phoned to tell me she got the job. I was shocked that she would do this. She not only said nothing gracious, but went on about how this job would now complicate her marriage, etc. I held it together to congratulate her at the time. Now, however, I feel as if Wanda called to put me in my place. I should add that I have never done anything to her. What on earth was she thinking?! Did she deliberately want to hurt me?

Answer: "What on earth was she thinking?"

Ms. Mentor, who knows all, indeed knows what she was thinking, and knows what everyone was thinking in all the above missives. She also sees in her correspondents a vision of academe as a place swirling with dark forces, a sinister domain dedicated to making graduate students and faculty members feel inadequate and inept, and maybe ugly as well.

Many a troubled young writer to Ms. Mentor sees no humor at all in the old joke about the patient who's just been told he's dying. He barks at the doctor, "I want a second opinion!" -- to which the doctor replies, "You're ugly, too."

No doubt many of Ms. Mentor's readers believe that THEY -- those who do the hiring, directing, advising, and tenuring -- are all out to get you. In fact, they are probably all in cahoots to make you feel miserable and powerless. They love to watch you squirm. At this very moment, they are caucusing and concocting further tortures just for you.

And after all, as that great social observer Charles Manson used to say, "Paranoia is just a more exquisite form of awareness."

But Manson wasn't really talking about entrenched academics. In reality, as Ms. Mentor has been observing for centuries, academics rarely have vicious conspiracies, or even grand strategies. In the world of scholars, what may seem to be malicious is usually, in fact, a conglomeration of incompetence, exhaustion, and ennui. Academics, like real people, are full of mixed and competing motives, all of which are routinely misinterpreted by their peers.

Sometimes, as in one of the above letters, what seems cruel may even be a clumsy effort to be kind. And now, to the specifics.

Ms. Mentor's first two correspondents, Egbert and Frieda, seem fairly new to academe. For there are certain anxieties that particularly bedevil the young. That's true of other correspondents as well: "Kathy's" nightmare has her in front of a class, with egg on her face and spinach in her teeth. "Larry" dreams that he's naked in front of a roomful of chortling sophomores.

Or, at the end of the semester, "Melvin" wakes up in a sweat, from a horrible vision. After three months of trying to teach introductory German (a language he doesn't know), Melvin has discovered that he was supposed to be coaching the basketball team -- which, coachless, has forfeited all its games. Everyone wants to hang Melvin in effigy.

Those dreams of anxiety and ineptitude usually fade, and most people do find their levels and niches, as Egbert hopes to do. Of course, there are scholars who spend their entire careers gnashing and wallowing in envy ("Is his bigger?"), but Ms. Mentor recommends that Egbert be practical. Find out how many papers the last tenured person published, and do a little bit more.

Frieda's plight, meanwhile, is well-known to parents and children. How can you take seriously, as an adult, someone whose diapers you've changed? And how can you consider as a full-fledged colleague someone whose dissertation you saw in its most naked, raw, and vulnerable state?

Yet directors, like parents, have to admit that their little ones now have their own wings. Frieda's director should be sharing opportunities, talking up her merits, and smoothing her transition from trainee to tenurite. Frieda can help, too, by (gulp) calling him by his first name if she hasn't before. She must not behave in a subservient way at conferences, and she should contact her director only on professional matters. (If he has ever given her relationship advice, he may not take her seriously as a colleague.)

She should keep her director informed of her triumphs. She should make it easy for him to trumpet her successes -- and take some credit, if he'd like. They can both be winners.

But what if you're rejected by postcard, as Gerald was? And you're sure that everyone's talking about what a loser you are?

Yes, Ms. Mentor knows what motivates Insensitive U. Everyone is busy, postage is expensive, and many hiring slots are yanked or shifted about because of the vagaries of legislatures, deans, and assorted other scoundrels. Indeed, many candidates are never told anything at all. But a "You Flunked" postcard is just cruel.

It will be cold comfort, but Gerald has Ms. Mentor's permission to tell everyone: "I wouldn't want to work at such a place anyway."

And then there is dear Hilda, who is trying to please two mistresses: her mentor and her partner. One represents the public world of work and esteem; the other represents the private world of hearth and home. Hilda, naturally, wants it all -- but she is not unique.

We all want nurturing love and meaningful work. And virtually every sage, including Sigmund Freud ("Civilization and Its Discontents") and Mick Jagger ("You can't always get what you want") has told us that we must choose.

Hilda is asking Ms. Mentor to choose for her, something Ms. Mentor will not do. But she congratulates Hilda for having both an esteemed mentor and a beloved partner. Hilda has a richness in her life that few women possess, and her choice can never be as wrenching as it would be if she were alone, rudderless, friendless, and mentorless.

She is far better off than Imogene, for instance -- who feels betrayed. Wanda, Imogene believes, has called up to ambush her with bad news ("I got the job you wanted") and then to rub her nose in it. But Ms. Mentor suggests another interpretation: that Wanda is trying to build bridges to Imogene, who is already her professional colleague.

Wanda, awkwardly, is making overtures and trying to mediate: Yes, I got the job, but it's not perfect -- it'll make problems for my marriage. As women often learn to do, Wanda is putting herself down (slightly) in order to make the other person feel better. She is stretching out a hand to Imogene -- who can't yet see that.

After all, who really wants to be a good loser?

Ms. Mentor does wonder why the hiring university did not first notify Imogene, and all other unsuccessful candidates, that Wanda was the winner. Is this another Insensitive U.? What could they be thinking?

For academics do crave explanations. They like the world to be ordered, coherent, and rational. They like to understand motives, and they want Ms. Mentor to make sense of it all.

But when it comes to love and work, winning and losing, growing up and making choices -- all of us are filled with dark, swirling, mixed motives, fears, and drives.

And so Ms. Mentor will not rule in matters of the heart. There are some corners into which Ms. Mentor prefers not to shine her candelabrum.

I'm a feminist, considered a noxious weed among my dinosaur colleagues. If I publish enough, avoid making enemies, and get tenure, may I possibly outlive them and do what I want to do and be happy and free at last?

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor continues to be heartened by the improved quality of her correspondence. Few readers now expect her to be their librarian, search engine, or validator. Many more send her gossip, wry humor, and complex questions that inspire her to search her vast brain (her data bank) for examples, anecdotes, parables, and memorabilia. Her readers enable her to improve and correct the world.

Some of the recurring dilemmas discussed by Ms. Mentor's readers are also handled by other learned worthies on this site -- among them the two-career problem, the older Ph.D., the best C.V., the best Web page, and more. Ms. Mentor reminds readers that she can only rarely answer letters personally, and that she usually chooses for her column the most representative, lively, or befuddled missives.

In future columns, Ms. Mentor may take up Backstabbers, Whistle Blowers, and assorted other fauna of academe. She is also interested in hearing from readers who have experiences to share (anonymously, of course) with teaching evaluations, sexual harassment, and meals that went well or awry.