An ex-student found my number and now won't leave me alone?

I acted as lab assistant last fall (2012) and one of the students, who I'll call Nancy, got very attached to me. I'm a female, nearly 20, and she was more comfortable talking to me about the lab assignments than she was the male teacher. I'm pretty sure she had aspergers/autism of some spectrum, because she had difficulty picking up on social cues and demanded my attention the whole class, even when I was busy with other students.

It's been five months since I had the class with her. Less than a week after the class ended, somehow she got my number. She started using it as a way to get class information and advice for other classes, and I was happy to give it. I like being of use to people. But now it's gotten out of control. I have since moved on from that university and am six time zones away, but it doesn't stop her. She texts me essays and rants about why I won't text her back, when I tried to explicitly explain to her that my number was for academic use only. She texts me every day, multiple times a day, and since we both have iPhones she knows that the texts have been delivered. I can't just keep ignoring her because it's started getting into the stalker spectrum, and I can't change my number as I'm in the middle of a really big job hunt (lots of resumes out there:/). I tried blocking her, but my dad is paying my phone bill as my christmas present and he refuses to pay the extra fee to do so.

I'm worried that texting her back will exacerbate the issue, because she does NOT understand the word 'no'. I've tried it. What do I do?

The fact that she has clearly become a stalker is the reason you SHOULD ignore her. By that I mean that you should not respond AT All to any of her attempts to contact you. Doing so will only encourage her. Do not speak to stalkers, do not text them, do not respond to anything they do.

Pay the blocking fee yourself. It's important enough that you should do so. Have you explained to your father that you are being stalked?

As soon as possible, change your number -- let's hope you get a job soon. Once you do, don't put any information out there about where you work, the address of the place, what exactly you do, and so forth. You need to keep your online footprint as clean and bare bones as possible. That means staying off of social media, too.

Good luck. I hope you won't have to go the lawyer/restraining order route. The fact that you're six time zones away should help.

What phone company do you have? Because i thought blocking a number is free. Try logging into your account on your providers website and you simply type the number you want to block. There's got to be a way. I have sprint and thats how my sister blocked a number.

Block her number anyways, have your dad pay your regular bill and then give him the money for the extra fee.

You must recognize her number by now so do not respond, just delete.

So you get more spam than you want. It is just spam, ignore them until they stop. This might take months or even a year, but this is an easy solution. Sure, you get several texts a day, so what? Stop paying attention to them. I do not see why this is a problem to be honest, this is not ideal, but it is your life, so deal with this inconvenient situation until it goes away by *not* dealing with it.

Pay the blocking fee! Even if you have to eat peanutbutter for a month, pay the fee.

A couple suggestions for you and none of them are pretty. Especially since you seem sympathetic towards this girl, but this has to stop.

What she is doing is stalking, and it is against the law. If you haven't told your father the full situation, I would suggest you do so, and offer to pay the additional fee to block the number.

You can also threaten to report her actions to the police. (I told you these were not pretty.)

Unfortunately with stalking, nothing you say or do will ever get her to stop. You're her addiction. You're going to have to block her out of your life completely.

Change your number it's really the only thing you CAN do

If you aren't willing to pay for blocking the number, fake it. Draft and save a standard-sounding message that says something to the effect that "the number you have contacted has been disconnected". Send the same exact message every time she contacts you until, hopefully, she stops.

The only other thing I can think of is to contact someone at the school and see if you can get someone to contact her parents on your behalf.

Best of luck.