Confessions of an Admissions Tour Guide

Yesterday I was sitting at Startbucks drinking my venti iced black tea, extra tea, sweetened and oatmeal cookie. I love reading days because I can swipe and use the meal plan all day at Starbucks, where as on regular school days I can only swipe until noon. That means I usually can't swipe at all because I would until 12:30. The occasional times that I could swipe during a work day are my favorite days ever.

Yesterday was the first day I had to give a tour at work all week. I had a nice break. At first I was really not looking forward to my tour but I decided to put on a happy face and give them the best tour possible. It turned out the prospective students on tour today were interested in my 2 favorite majors here, Sports/Entertainment/Event Management (SEE) and Creative Advertising. Luckily for them, I am the most knowledgeable on those two majors. One of the fathers on tour was a wanderer, you know the type, the one that reads all of the posters on the wall while I'm talking. He did ask some pretty good questions. The SEE major on tour was very interested and already pretty knowledgeable about the school, but her parents looked unamused. The only thing her dad talked about with the shot glass necklace he saw in one of the tour rooms. Once we got up to Xavier Academic Hall, I let the SEE girl and her family go across the street to Financial Services and took the ad major up to the Ad Lab. Luckily on the way up I saw Prof. Chilabato (my favorite professor) and asked him to talk to the family for a bit about the ad program. I feel like he really enjoyed it. Any time he gets a chance to brag about his ad team, he's happy. I feel like the father was sold on the school, the girl is still hesitant about living in the city. Understandable. Coming from a small town, I can definitely see where someone would be hesitant. Sometimes being a tour guide feels like being a sales person for the school. There are certain days where I really want to sell the school and I really want students to want to come here even though I don't get paid by commission. I think there are days I like to pretend that I do work off commission. That must mean I really do love this university. It's awful that our worst selling point is our student body. Interaction with the student body is the worst thing for admissions. That's why we schedule tours at the time that we do. Students are in class or its a Friday and students are still passed out from the Thursday night before. We're working on getting rid of the dead weight around here. No attendance policy next year. I'd like to see the students here fail because they won't ever go to class. We have also raised our admission requirements from a 2.75 gpa to 3.0 gpa. Such a good school, I don't know how we got the reputation that we have in industry with the majority of the students that we have here.

Today I am unable to do my tour. My sickness has progressed and transformed from day to day this week. Early this week I had body aches, chills, and hot flashes. Now it has progressed to me losing my voice, coughing, and runny nose. Hopefully this means I am almost over the cold, this must be the end of the cycle correct?

Now I must study for my final exams. That's it for now. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!