Help Desk

:( Help!

I'm 28. I teach eighth grade. Basically this means that I wake up at 6am and have no social life except Saturday night. It's hard to meet guys, and sometimes it feels like my friends forget I exist.

This Halloween, I was happy to be included in my girlfriends' plan for a group costume. Then they told me the idea: sexy Guardians of the Galaxy, with me as sexy Groot. The outfit they have in mind for me "leaves" little to the imagination, ha ha.

I know that pics of this costume are going to end up on Facebook. While that's not all bad – I don't mind the guy I have a crush on seeing them – I feel weird because, just this summer, I became Facebook friends with two ex-students. I sometimes chat with them about their plans for after graduation, and I sort of like that they look to me as a mentor. Is there some way to block them from seeing these photos?

– Getting Raunchy Online, Offline Teacher

Be careful with this, GROOT. When it comes to social media, teachers are held to a higher standard than most professions. While this state of affairs does recognize the vital role teachers play in shaping young lives, we wonder why that recognition can't play out in the form of, say, higher salaries. Instead, we regularly see teachers fired or suspended for posting photos in swimsuits or with alcohol, or for complaining about their students on the Internet.

In theory, you can control which friends see certain Facebook posts. Here's how: First, organize your friend list, marking ex-students, older relatives who just don't understand, and weird stalker dudes as "Acquaintances." Then, on each post or photo, look for a menu where you can select "Friends Except Acquaintances" as your audience. Also, turn on Timeline Review in your privacy settings. That way, no tagged photos will slip through when you're away from your computer.

But if you go this route, GROOT, you may want to knock on wood. Facebook has a terrible track record of suddenly changing privacy settings, including on individual posts, to make them more public and thus increase its scope as a search service. We don't advise trusting them with your job security. Instead, we suggest you choose between the following priorities:

1) Put your ex-students first. Let them look up to you on Facebook as a model for an adult life that is not too, well, adult. In that case, skip the sexy tree costume.

2) Put yourself first. Have fun and be the messy twentysomething you have every right to be. To do that, you'll need to create impermeable boundaries on Facebook – i.e., don't friend your ex-students.

The choice is yours, GROOT, but given what you've written, we think the latter option suits you better right now. Revisit the question in a few years, when you're hopefully less stressed out about meeting guys and holding on to old friendships. By then, you may find that your colors have changed. :) HD