This is a guest post by TampaBayScene’s Jordan Sypek
“Hi, my name is Jordan and I will be your tour guide today.”
As an on-campus tour guide, this line has been branded into my daily consciousness.
The last thing I ever wanted to do was get an on campus job, but it has surprisingly been pretty enjoyable. And after giving a handful of tours, people become pretty predictable.
First is the mother holding a notebook. You must do everything in your power to remove her from your group. The notebook is inevitably filled with annoying questions that she will fire off every minute throughout the hour-long tour. She will have done all of her research online and has probably even completed a virtual campus walk-through. Her questions will be annoying, unnecessary and endless.
Via: comerecommended.com
Next you will find the kid who looks totally apathetic about the tour and school in general. His parents are clearly dragging him on stupid college tours and all he wants to do is go to the beach. He doesn’t even want to go to college in Florida, or maybe even go to college at all. How do you interact with this type of person? Simple. You don’t.
After 10 minutes of the tour, you notice the overly eager girl who is constantly h
olding up the group to take pictures of everything. She continually tells her mom how much she wants to go to school here. At the end of the tour this girl has no storage left on her iPhone because she has 41 pictures of palm trees, 19 pictures of the pool and countless pictures of the dorm rooms.
Since Florida weather is as unpredictable as Taylor Swift’s dating life, it will undoubtedly start to rain at some point throughout the tour. No one seems to be bothered by the rain, except for the prissy mom from West Palm Beach who can’t get her new Prada bag wet and doesn’t want her hair to frizz. You turn around and roll your eyes.
The worst conversation to have on a tour is of the “What is there to do on the weekends?” variety, particularly, “Is this a party school?” You want to sigh and nod, but instead you need to act professional, as if you have no idea what constitutes a crazy college party. These parents don’t realize that every college is a party school, that no matter where your honor roll student/boy scout goes, he is going to party like it’s the apocalypse.
About halfway through the tour, you meet the family who asks all the questions you already mentioned. This may in fact be the picture-taking girl, because she was clearly too busy snapping photos of squirrels to pay attention to the facts.
The worst part about being a college tour guide is having to be at open house before 9 a.m. You’ve gotta wake up at an ungodly hour with a still-half-drunk smile, last night’s makeup washed off and the just-right polo. You probably don’t have your student ID because you misplaced it the night before and didn’t have time to look for it.
Via: realbuzz.com
Once you start giving your tour you realize you still have your wristband on from last night. A father asks what the wristband is from, and you don’t even need to think twice about the answer because this has happened to you before. You explain you went to a concert the night before because you live in a great city that has a lot to do. This isn’t a complete lie, right? My night out until 3 in the morning can count as a concert, right? Probably not, no. But Mr. Nosey doesn’t need to know the truth.
I’m not implying that just anyone can (or should) become a tour guide. You need to have great memory and be quick on your feet. You also need to be a jokester. Parents love jokes. (Although sometimes you may tell a joke that no one laughs at. Don’t feel defeated — your joke about having a tanning team at the pool will be funny forever. Those people just don’t know good comedy.)
Money doesn’t grow on trees, but when you get paid to herd people around campus like sheep, it sure feels like it does.
Featured photo courtesy of: turner.com
