Tour Guide Liars

Well, it’s that time of year again: professors are sending out e-mails trying to slowly get us ready to be quarantined in the library, everyone wants to know when your classes start, your tuition bill should be in the mail soon… need a loan?

I’m not ready to go back quite yet. I’m ready to see all my friends and walk to class and eat cafeteria food and study and take tests and talk about weekend plans and go to office hours and lounge on the quad and scope out library study spots and shower while wearing shoes. I know that sounds like basically everything college life has to offer, and it is, but there’s one particular thing I just cannot get ready for: prospective student tours.

I don’t mind the intrusion on campus, since I was an intruder this time last year, what I mind are the tour guides. The tour guides lie. I wanted to be a tour guide, I admit, and I went through the process and they did not pick me. In fact, I have a pretty good guess why I wasn’t picked.

For the group interview, we all had to bring an item of importance to us, so I brought Harvey. Harvey is a good bunny who is named after another bunny who is six-feet tall, my Harvey is purple and he wears a very dapper plaid bow tie. I think he represents friendship and love and I thought I would be able to articulate that to the board of tour guide liars in front of me.

“Well, Mark, what did you bring?” Tour Guide Liar #1 asked. Names have been changed because I can’t remember them.

“Well, this is a report that I wrote when I was a freshman. It is a theoretical approach to some statistical stuff that no one uses – ever – but I thought I would try my hand at it because I’m that full of myself.” Really? Know what I was doing freshman year? Knitting scarves for people who didn’t appreciate them! “It won a national championship… I have five others like it” The board “oohed” and “aahed”

“And what about you, Sally?”

Sally had a really beat up looking monkey stuffed animal. Perfect. I bet your third grade teacher gave you that and you never forgot her. “Well, I got this in third grade” Ha! Knew it. “And his name is Axel. Which is kind of funny because my ice skating coach gave it to me when I landed my first triple axel.” What? “I went on to compete in many national championships, and I have a lot of ribbons. I’m still a competitive skater.”

Tour Guide Liar #1 piped up, “Well, I may or may not also be a competitive skater,” Oh you would be, Penelope “but I didn’t land my first triple axel until fourth grade.” Poor baby “Jill, what did you bring?”

“I brought a bag,” Okay, Jill, this is perfect. You got it at the mall with your friends… “And I got it last summer.” Perfect, perfect “When I went to Ghana and helped school children with AIDS.” You know, I thought we could be friends, but it just isn’t working out.

And there I sat with Harvey, both of us thinking about how we were going to call our Mommies when this was over. So I’m pretty sure that was the precise moment they decided I just didn’t cut the mustard.

Anyway, I’m obviously over that whole… debacle, and now I’m just appalled at what these people are telling impressionable seventeen year olds

First the tour guides start off and they say that the “quad is like our beach.” This is the classic “in college, finding friends will be so much easier” lie. This makes it sound like all you have to do is sit on the quad for a few hours and someone will invite you to join their Frisbee game. The truth is you still have to make an effort to make friends, no one will think you’re cool if you’re sitting alone. They’ll wonder why you don’t have anywhere to be for three hours straight.

Then we talk about the dorms and what a lovely, wonderful, perfect experience all dorms have. I got to experience this lie first hand. Not all dorms are wonderful. As hard as the housing department tries (they don’t) to make all matches compatible, they can still screw it up. A lot. And you could – hypothetically – end up in a dorm full of people who only have hobbies that include alcohol and illegal substances. Hypothetically.

“Our meal plans are just so easy to understand! Here, let me tell you…” This is your cue to stop listening. If you listen to the spiel on punches, dining, dining locations, hours of operation, gold punches, whatever, you will be under the impression that little Johnny will never eat in his four years of college. This is obviously not true. College kids eat very very well. We just have to live in the system to understand it.

If, however, little Johnny is trying to tell you his freshman fifteen is all from food, I can assure you that is a lie. This is because there is drinking on college campuses. The tour guides will tell you the school has it under control and no beer will get into underage hands. Yeah right. Not drinking is a personal decision, and I’ve figured out that the freshman who drink are the ones who were already drinking in high school. The ones with the moms like Amy Poehler in Mean Girls.

I am proud to be a Duke and I am excited to go back in the fall, I just think the tours should be a little more down to earth. I’m sure JMU wasn’t the first school to have a mail service and it won’t be the last.