According to the College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing 2017” report, the average cost of tuition and fees increased by more than 3 percent at private and public colleges between the 2016-2017 and the 2017-2018 school year.

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Dear Rivkie,

 Yom Kippur is just around the corner and I’m unsure how to improve my experience this year. Usually, I spend the day hungry and grouchy, and I find it hard to concentrate on the service while thinking about what to eat after the fast! I want to do teshuva (repentance) and I know there are plenty of things I did wrong this year, but I am so distracted I feel like I don’t give it my all on Yom Kippur. What can I do to make Yom Kippur more meaningful this year?

My boyfriend and I dated for two years. Last month, I decided to end the relationship. However, he continues to email and text me, asking to meet. He says he wants to talk in person so he can have closure. However, we have already had several conversations, and I shared my reasons for wanting to end the relationship. I prefer not to meet, and his constant texts and emails are very upsetting to me. I don’t want to cause him more pain, but I need him to accept my choice and move forward. What can I do to make this happen?

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When asked what his favorite subject is, my son answers, “English.” This always comes as a surprise — for years he proclaimed he hated writing, and getting him to write always engendered a fight. The reason he now likes English is not a surprise. He will tell you that it is “because of the teacher — she is really nice.”

Parenting experts have much to say about behavioral management, the methodical approach to parenting that seeks to rationally examine and structure expectations, environment, and consequences. While this approach has much merit, it is incomplete and often ineffective if it lacks something that we might call “relationship management.”

Yom Kippur looms on the horizon. We have traveled through Elul, that month of soul searching, inner accounting, and resolve to change. We’ve listened to the shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah, that heart-piercing sound, which Maimonides tells us is designed to wake us from our spiritual slumber. We have intoned the words: “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur, it is sealed.” In this time of judgment, we all engage in a great deal of self-judgment. How do we keep up our spirits and find confidence that we can, in fact, improve, rather than dropping into feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and despair?

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Dear Rivkie,

 School has barely started and I’m already dreading carpool. I am a parent in a carpool mostly with new people, and I don’t know them well at all. Some of the people seem super uptight and constantly comment on group emails, while others barely answer at all. Someone already got angry with another carpool member about switching days. I’m not great with Google Docs, so I’m having a hard time working with the spreadsheet we’re using, but I’m too nervous to ask someone to help!

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Dear Rivkie,

 It’s back-to-school time, and my 14-year-old son is dreading it. He misses his friends from sleepaway camp and doesn’t gel with the boys in his class the same way (he is brainy and into science fiction and history, and they are ... let’s just say, not). This happens literally every year since he started going to camp at age 10. Short of mail-ordering new classmates, what can we do to help him accept and connect with the peers he does have instead of wishing he was back at camp?

Consider this common scenario: A recruiter reaches out to you about a great job. You agree you are well qualified, and you like the location, salary, and company. You submit your resume, but then hear nothing. Or you get the interview, but then hear nothing. Or you are a semifinalist, but then hear nothing.