I APOLOGIZE for the vanilla and ultimately frivolous nature of this query, but this situation has been bothering me! I understand if this one doesn’t make it to the top of the question pile. I am a college student and a grader for a class. One of the rules for being a grader is that we cannot date people in the class. I have followed this rule despite starting to take a serious interest in a senior, call him ‘B’, in the class.

We hit it off, and when we hang out, I feel like there’s a low-boiling mutual interest that might definitely become something more serious were we able to act on it. Obviously, waiting until the end of this semester means waiting until he’s graduating, so I put the thought out of my mind and moved on.

Since then, I fell pretty hard (and stupidly) for a younger guy, ‘C’, who barely notices me despite some mild overtures I’ve made. I feel stupid about it, since I can’t keep making these overtures without getting any — and I mean any — response. Specifically, I have e-mailed him a few times about a project he’s working on that I would like to be part of. He hasn’t taken me up on the offer. It seems pretty clear.

Well, now the semester is winding down, and it turns out I’ll be returning the final problem set in B’s class with only a few weeks to go to the end of the semester. I would like to ask ‘B’ to a dance, and perhaps more than that, but I haven’t actually killed the idea of asking out ‘C’.

I feel sitting down with C for a “you’re not interested, right?” conversation might be overkill, but it may be the only way for me to move on without this silliness hanging over me.