neniaf

I'm not a new professor by a long shot, but this one has me stumped, so I'm hoping for some input from students and other faculty.

There is a young woman in my class who has a bad academic reputation at my university among both faculty and other students. Colleagues expressed sympathy to me when they discovered she was in my class this semester. I had to shift her into another group when several of her classmates refused to work with her based upon past experience. I made some lame excuse about changing my mind about the numbers of students I wanted in each group, but I could see from her expression that she caught on.

But here's the thing: So far, in my class, she has done extremely well. She has participated regularly in class discussions. I just graded the midterms and hers is one of the better ones. She frequently jumps forward to help me with the stubborn classroom technology. Based on her performance in my class, the reaction she is getting from others doesn't make any sense at all. I'm not sure if she is sucking up (but she doesn't do that to my colleagues) or if she is looking for sympathy from me. I'm a little baffled, but what is obvious to me is that if she wants to, she is capable of doing really well.

Obviously, I will praise her for the things she is doing well, and equally obviously, nothing I have heard about her from others will enter into my evaluation of her work for my class. I'm wondering, though, if I shouldn't talk to her about this disparity between what I've observed and what I've heard. I don't want to upset her by bringing up things she probably doesn't realize that I know about her, but at the same time, I'm thinking that if she DOES trust me more than she does others, I could potentially turn her life around, and I'd hate to let that opportunity pass. If it makes a difference, I should add that I'm probably old enough to be her grandmother. Any suggestions?

A few weeks ago, I got a message saying that Yahoo! Answers was being upgraded, and I could expect problems for a few days. At the time, it seemed fine, but then a few days later, every time I submit an answer it tells me there is an error, and I have to backtrack twice to get back to the questions, which is a real nuisance! On the page where the error message appears, there is a link which it says to click if you have a problem, but I've tried that twice now, and each time it led me to a page which seemed completely unrelated and which gave no place to express any concerns.

I just moved into my parents' old house, which had been unoccupied for two years, and the garden was probably neglected for several years prior to that as my parents became incapacitated. I'm finding that most of the surviving plants are draped in spider webs (so strong that aiming the hose at them doesn't tear them), and and some plants, particularly a large hibiscus in the back, are being completely choked out by them. I know that spiders are not all bad, but this is too much! Short of dousing them with pesticides (which, I think, is what my dad did), what can I do to to get rid of them? I'm in Southern California, if that matters.

This is not something with which I would normally have trouble, but there are two factors here causing confusion. I'm applying for a job, and at the top of the job description, it gives a contact person and an email address which was obviously set up for this particular job. Then, at the bottom of the same job description, it says, "Applications and letters of nomination should be submitted to:" and it gives the names of two more people, each with a separate email address. So far, so good. I could easily send a letter to Mr. Smith, Ms. Brown, and Dr. Jones, using all three email addresses, even though it is a little odd to send it to three people.

Except that I know one of these three people. Fairly well. I've worked with her on three separate occasions in the past. So I'm wondering: Should I send the application to her alone (and risk alienating the other two, whose role in the search I don't know? Should I send it to Mr. Smith, Ms. Brown, and Dr. Jones, ignoring the fact that I've been calling Ms. Brown by her first name for years? It would look too strange to write Mr. Smith, Dr. Jones, and Mary, so I know that is wrong - what would you do under the circumstances?

I accidentally stained a new, white granite countertop, and in reading up on how to repair it, several sites suggest that I need to make a poultice out of "whiting" or chalk powder and hydrogen peroxide. I have the hydrogen peroxide, but does anyone know where I might find the other ingredient?

Despite checking off the option to remember my email user name and password for 2 weeks, the time period between requests keeps getting shorter. Today it is less than 15 minutes, so I'm constantly having to resubmit my information to check my email! What can I do about this?

I'm in the process of buying a home, and when the mortgage broker checked my credit reports, the one thing which affected all three of them was that they said there had been excessive inquiries into my credit status. This was not from me, because I've never dared to look at my own credit reports. But now that I've looked (and it wasn't at all as bad as I feared), I'm wondering how often I can check my own credit reports without getting dinged for asking too often?

Does anyone else get as frustrated as I do when you spend 15 minutes answering a question and then click, only to discover that the asker has removed the question? I really wish Yahoo! would come up with a way of warning us earlier. Perhaps when the question gets removed, you could no longer type into the answer box?

I answer most of my questions in the Higher Education area. I currently have 1459 Best Answers overall, so even if only 2/3 of my questions were in that category (and I would estimate it at more like 90%), I would come in before the #4 Answerer, who only has 631. Yet I don't appear on the list at all! Why is that?

I'm in the process of interviewing for a job, and I have a major interview scheduled for next week, which I have been really excited about. It is spread out over two days, and involves talking with a lot of different people, all of whom have obviously taken time out of their schedules to meet with me.

Now, here's the problem. One of my parents is dying, and it appears that the end is very near. We have been told by the medical people that it could happen at any time. Obviously, if it should happen, I cannot just go merrily off to an interview - I have to support the other parent.

So, should I let the search firm know this now? I hate to bring negatives to the table, especially since there is a chance that it won't interfere at all, yet I also don't want to find myself having to call the day of the interview to cancel, wasting all of these people's time. How should I handle it?

My family was away, so I spent Thanksgiving weekend alone in San Francisco. I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at a good restaurant and, knowing that the evening would be busy, I went out at 5 p.m. To my shock, three restaurants in a row refused to seat me, not because they had no tables, but because I was alone. In each one, I was told that they needed to "maximize seating", and thus could not accommodate single diners! Each offered to let me sit at the bar, or at high bar tables (without tablecloths) in the bar area, but none would let me eat in the dining room, even when there were obviously empty tables right in front of me. I couldn't help thinking that if I were a party of three wanting to sit at a table which would accommodate four, they would not have refused me, and I wondered if a man would have been treated the same way. I should add that I had dressed nicely, was well-groomed, and have never been refused service elsewhere.