Question: I'm one of four chosen grad students in Professor Ace's research group. When we travel to research sites and meetings this winter, his grant will pay for two double rooms for us students, two to a room. But I'm the only woman in the group. Eeeeeek! I don't want to share a room with a strange man -- even a fellow researcher. What should I do?
Answer: After Ms. Mentor published this query last month, she received many a deeply felt, intriguing reply from readers, all of them women. She wonders if male readers do not identify with the problem; do not care; or have secret solutions that they are reluctant to share.
Many young men of the early 1970s, in the heyday of the Sexual Revolution, might have proposed group sex as The Answer. But academics are older now, and more worried about disease, dysfunctions, embarrassments, underwear, lawsuits, and a host of things that young and randy folk knew nothing of, a generation ago.
Nor did such questions arise in Ms. Mentor's long-ago youth, when there were only two sexes (genders had not yet been invented). The two sexes were to be kept apart until united in matrimony. Young people attended school primarily with persons of their own sex, and only one sex (and one race) was groomed for academic leadership and success.
That situation stank. Ms. Mentor is much happier to have today's muddles -- for they are signs of progress and possibility.
But awkward sleeping situations do occur where women are most rare: in SEM (science, engineering, and math) disciplines. Some SEM professors have been notoriously clueless -- "truly afraid of interpersonal conflict and even emotion," writes one of Ms. Mentor's correspondents. "That explains why they devote their careers to, for instance, the life cycle of cockroaches."
Yet some profs do manage better. One reader who shared a hotel room with her male adviser says, "I have to admit I was a bit anxious about it, but I trusted him and that makes a big difference." Another feels room sharing would be fine if she and a male student had a "genderless" relationship, but not otherwise.
For gossip, Ms. Mentor is especially grateful to Ms. A, who recently "graduated, woohoo!" from "Holy U.," a religiously affiliated school where it's "forbidden" for opposite-sex groups to share rooms. Nevertheless, at one memorable conference, Ms. A and her companions did it.
Ms. A and Ms. B (another student) shared one bed. Mr. C and Male Prof. D shared the other. And everyone was sworn to secrecy, lest Prof. D be fired for sharing a bed with another man. Holy U., it turns out, also expels people for homosexuality.
Ms. Mentor is proud of Ms. A and her friends for subverting the system. In a bigoted university, surrounded by prejudices, one should seize all such opportunities to defy authority.
But their adventures also make Ms. Mentor glad that she lives in an ivory tower. She never has to wake up next to a stranger of any sex and wonder Who Knows.
Nor, of course, does she have to deal with other messy questions, such as: Who gets to bunk with the oddball (the woman)? Who'll have to explain things to suspicious partners or spouses? Who has the most fervent or eccentric rituals, including tweakings, snorings, dribblings, or sniffings?
And now that she is truly uncomfortable, Ms. Mentor exhorts her original correspondent to think first of her own comfort. If there is no one in the group that you would be comfortable bunking with ("genderlessly," Ms. Mentor presumes), then you should not do so. Go to your professor and say, "We have an awkward situation here: I'm the only woman. How can we handle the accommodations on our trip to Aruba?"
The "we" engages the professor in the solution; "you" sounds accusatory. Some may think you're engaging in troublemaking, princess behavior -- but in fact you're asking for equal educational opportunity. You're protecting your professor from gossip as well as grievances ("hostile environment"), and cranky, anxious, sleep-deprived assistants.
Moreover, many a male prof wants to be sensitive and egalitarian, a good guy. You can show him how. You can offer to share with a female roommate, if he'll contact meeting organizers or colleagues and find you one -- or help you to do so. You can ask for the names of women in the field and contact them yourself. What better way to network?
Or Professor Ace can suddenly find "floating" money in his grant to cover another room for you. Or he can tell the three male grad students that they must share a room. He can also spring for a cot or rollaway bed if they start kvetching about sharing a double bed.
Best of all is to find a female professor to room with you. Not only will she almost certainly take pity on you and pay the whole bill, but she'll also have the knowledge you need: how to cope as a woman in your field. She may be eager, in fact, to spill what she knows to willing ears.
In short, you'll be in a position to be mentored. And Ms. Mentor knows there is no better position in the universe as we know it.
Question: My professors are all willing to give me detailed, serious, and thoroughly contradictory advice about my dissertation, the job market, teaching vs. research, and whether my spouse is a divine asset or a hopeless ball and chain. Will Ms. Mentor, in a future column, tell me how to distinguish among useful, bogus, amd destructive nuggets of advice?
Answer: Yes.
Sage Readers: The volume of Ms. Mentor's mail having diminished somewhat, she hopes that the most egregious injustices and crying shames have gone on sabbatical until August. She regrets that she can rarely answer individual communiqués, but when trends appear, she will often combine them into one heartfelt query in this column.
She is now hearing most from sly or earnest souls seeking to conceal their pasts: bad transcripts, poor performance evaluations, tenure denials, grade complaints, marital mishaps, bumpy relations with advisers and bosses and colleagues.
Summer being the sublime season for freelance research, Ms. Mentor recommends that her correspondents noodle about on this site -- where many job counselors hold forth -- and also venture out to libraries and bookstores for a spate of obsessive reading.
Ms. Mentor prescribes immersing oneself in how-to-do-it handbooks about the job world and academia, including her own tome (listed below). Her troubled correspondents will learn how to smooth over supposed failings with well-orchestrated dossiers, seamless resumes, and screened phone calls.
But while they're loitering among the books, they will also find it humbling and instructive to read about tough cookies who have suffered slavery, the Holocaust, horrific families, and hopeless disabilities. Ms. Mentor declares: After you've read Frederick Douglass or Anne Frank, Maya Angelou or Nancy Mairs, a C-plus (yours or someone else's) will seem far less distressing.
Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English Department at Louisiana State University. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com
