Maria, 45, works as a waitress and is very popular with her customers because they know that they can count on her to serve them in good time when there is a rush. This trait can BEST be related to Maria's:

use of cognitive strategies to compensate for some losses

Explanation: Maria’s make use of cognitive strategies, which are certain measures (such as reasoning, planning, arithmetic, etc) established to generate decisions to solve problems and tap opportunities.

Moreover, this certain cognitive strategies are established through a series of ordered and overlapping logic. The logical aspect of her cognitive strategies are either taught or learned and are memorised for solving problems in the future.

Thus, Maria's was able to attend to her clients during crises (rush) because of her foresight knowledge on how to tackle the problems, which triggered her neurosensory processors to provide quick solutions to the immediate problems.

south, because if you took a map you would see texas is directly in the middle of east and west, but it is also downwards towards mexico, therefore it is south