Ms. Mentor

The Smell of Misplaced Priorities

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Question (from "Ben"): I'm an assistant professor at Midsized U, where my best M.A. student ("Stella") wants to apply to top Ph.D. programs. Stella is bright and capable, with stellar grades and great potential ... but she also has a substantial case of body odor. If she's in my office for five minutes, there will be a lingering unpleasant smell for half an hour.

I'm on good terms with professors where she will be applying and would like to alert them to Stella's application, but her pungency is no small matter to visit upon my peers for the next five to seven years. I am, therefore, reluctant to sing Stella's praises too strongly, lest colleagues treat future recommendations from me warily.

If I'm forced to choose, my relationship with my colleagues will count more than my desire to help Stella. Is it appropriate for me to alert her to the professional implications of a casual approach to hygiene? If so, how?

Answer: Ms. Mentor is reminded of "Margaret," an enormously talented student teacher whose third graders loved her laugh and her lilting voice. They flocked about her after school, had to be shooed away and sent home, and wept for days when she finished practice teaching and left them.

But "you're much too fat to be a good teacher," her supervisor told her. Margaret was a big, round woman who had been plush and pillowy all her life -- "but you have to get skinny," he said. "Join Weight Watchers and get it off, or I won't write you a recommendation." Knowing she couldn't be a twiggy even if she wanted to, Margaret quit teaching.

Her supervisor was irresponsible and cruel -- as is any adviser who destroys a student's career because he doesn't like her looks, or her race, or her hygiene.

In Stella's case, any third grader knows how to handle her situation badly: anonymous notes, deodorants dropped on her desk, lampoons and e-mails and graffiti about "Stinky." If Stella has had this difficulty all her life, she has endured all that abuse.

There are also adult cowards -- people who think that since odors are a delicate subject, Ben ought to enlist the nearest female professor, or the department secretary, or the director of women's studies, to chat with Stella about her "issue." Woman-to-woman, goes the thinking, the conversation might be less awkward -- a point of view that Ms. Mentor finds sexist as well as irresponsible.

It is Ben's job, not his colleagues', and women should not be dragooned into handling situations because men feel uncomfortable. Ben needs to take it like a man -- and talk to Stella.

What to say?

For his homework, Ben might read Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. He might also peruse Dale Carnegie's classic How to Win Friends and Influence People for ways to use a positive spin to handle a negative situation.

To Ms. Mentor's readers who are already objecting -- No touchy feely! No sensitivity palaver! -- Ms. Mentor points out that the ability to discuss anything at all with compassion is the mark of a good teacher as well as a mensch.

Or if Ben wants to consult an expert who won't make him feel queasy/twitchy, he might call an international-student adviser. Some institutions have handbooks for foreign students about peculiar American habits, such as chronic showering to cover one's natural animal smell. Ben can find out how the experts talk tactfully about deodorants to foreign students who do not want to violate American sensibilities (although many of them also know in their heart of hearts what a Scotsman once told Ms. Mentor: "You Yanks smell ridiculously floral").

But Ben's biggest challenge will be how to broach the subject to Stella. Ms. Mentor suggests a private conversation about "professional development," beginning with great praise for Stella's achievements. "Your work is excellent, and you should have an outstanding career, but there's one thing that may be a professional barrier. I don't want you to be turned down for any prizes or fellowships or opportunities, but right now there's a bit of a problem with, well, an odor that comes along with you...."

It is lovely to be suave, of course, as in the famous tale about the queen of England, who, to put it bluntly, broke wind at an official event. She apologized to the soldier nearest her, who said blandly, "I wouldn't have noticed had you not spoken about it, Your Majesty. I assumed it was the horse."

Few people can aspire to be so smooth, and you needn't try. Awkwardness and apologetic language may, in fact, come across as more considerate of Stella's feelings. It could be that she's unaware, or too busy to do laundry, or she could have a medical condition. But your role is to let her know that you support her and want her to succeed, and you don't want any irrelevant problems to prevent her from using her talents and pursuing her dreams. Ms. Mentor feels you must speak up.

Finally, Ms. Mentor finds it troubling that you seem to worry most about what your peers will think -- instead of concentrating on how to aid a brilliant student.

That doesn't smell quite right.

Question: Knowing that no fictions are ever thoroughly fictitious, will you ask your readers to recommend their most edifying and viciously witty academic novels, along with your own favorites, Alison Lurie's The War Between the Tates and David Lodge's Small World?

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor's early-summer correspondents have praised her for writing "academe" instead of "academia" and have urged her to write about the travails of administrators, preferably without "getting all huffy and hissy."

As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes comments, queries, and rants. She reminds nervous correspondents, especially recent ones raising concerns about homophobia, that she always removes or scrambles identifying details. She welcomes missives from Yahoo screen names, and in the past her e-mail has included notes from "Sydney Greenstreet," "Old Yeller," and the ubiquitous "Hot Babe." You needn't come out to Ms. Mentor.

Ms. Mentor rarely answers letters personally, but many readers have found help in her Chronicle archive; in her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia; and on The Chronicle's forums.

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.