Whew... thank you for your answer.  I am on my second semester of Java
and have done additional reading on the side, and if my understanding
were that off I would have considered not continuining my computer
education and looking for a different career path!

Sonja

There is a happy and a sad ending to this story.

The happy ending is that the help on this group is great!  This group
is helping me get over some of the bumps in the road to learning Java.

The sad ending is that I e-mailed my instructor, very nicely, with the
correct information, and she did not even acknowledge or respond to
the e-mail.

So, before class, I asked her if she had received the e-mail, and all
she said was "yes".

Then, during class she said that "Java considers a child pointing to
two parents as multiple inheritance.  In UML terminology, though,
multiple inheritance can be one class inheriting from one class
inheriting from another" (i.e. single-level verticle inheritance).

That blew me away, because:

1)  She didn't even thank me for or acknowledge the feedback and
having the courage to _help_ the teacher learn some things about Java
(noone expects anyone, even teachers to be perfect).

and

2)  I sincerely doubt that multi-level single inheritance is referred
to as "multiple inheritance" in very many (or in any) book on UML (I
could be wrong.....).

So, and this may not be very wise, but...... it irked me enough that I
decided to say something.  I wonder if it will affect my grade, and if
I will now be on her "black list", but I feel better after sending he
a short followup e-mail:

<start e-mail clip>

"Hi <instructor name omitted>.  I just wanted to touch base about the
e-mail clarifying some of the things we had talked about.  It was
really hard for me to follow up and provide feedback about things like
everything in Java inheriting from the Object class, the fact that in
Java you can inherit vertically (which was different than what you had
said when we talked after class), and the multiple inheritance
terminology difference in UML....

Personally, I like it when people give me feedback that helps clarify
things and helps me to understand them better, and then I thank them
for that feedback.  I was a little surprised that you didn't respond
to the e-mail.  I took a risk to clarify some things based on my
knowledge of Java at this point of my education.  I guess I would have
expected some kind of email or thank you or at least some kind of
acknowledgement.

</ end e-mail clip>

Thanks again to this group -- it's good to have a place where I can
come and have things clarified.

Sonja