Tour Guide

Katie D.

February 15, 2009 - 4:00 PM

I am a tour guide for the Clark Honors College on campus. It's a good job, if sometimes a funny one. On days when no one shows up for a tour, I do odd jobs around the college instead: I do data entry, assemble information packets, and it's me who keeps all those plants alive. I've gotten quite skilled with Microsoft Excel these days, and can use the copy machine like nobody's business.

But I signed up to be guiding tours, and that's what I really love doing. It's so fun when prospective students and their parents come in. Often they're on a trip including multiple university stops, just like I was when I arrived on campus for the first time. Their eyes are already glazed over with days of college tours and travel. They're jet-lagged and overwhelmed. The high schoolers are usually hungry and tired, and the parents are always interested in scholarship information.

It's fun, though, because I get to think back to being a high schooler myself, worried about college but mostly interested in what was happening in the here-and-now of high school life. Now, three years into college, I've come to take University life for granted: it's simply my reality these days. This job allows me to look back at my decision to come to the UO, and to think about the real pros and cons of my studies in the Honors College and at the University in general. Also, my little sister is a senior in high school this year, and I think of each student-parent set coming in as being like my sister and Mom visiting colleges: each with a completely different set of issues, interests, and questions.

I always tell the tour groups how happy I am here. I really am, too. I have loved the vast majority of my classes and am continually surprised and grateful for the variety of extracurricular options being offered on campus. At some point in the tour I always end up in the same place: telling them that the Honors College has given me small classes full of engaged students in the context of a large university with all the opportunities and benefits that come out of a large student body and diversity of interests. I think my college life thus far has been a great balance between the two.

The Honors College itself doesn't make much of a tour. It's located on a single floor of a small building (Chapman Hall). I sit my tour groups down in front of a computer to go over the course listings by way of explaining graduation requirements. Literature and history sequences taught by this variety of professors, with this variety of focuses on the same period of time. I tell the tour groups that our classes are limited to 25 students, and that the professors are all motivated and concerned for their students. And, at least in my experience, that's the truth.

Then we move on to colloquia classes, or seminar courses designed by professors to explore their areas of interest more closely with a group of engaged students. I have loved the colloquia classes I have been in so far. And I love that the Honors College students are such a diverse bunch: the most popular majors represented in the Honors College are English and Biology. So in any given class discussion you have a huge variety of perspectives on the same topic.

Then I show the groups the library, which is less impressive for its book selection than it is for its atmosphere: the couches, the (well-watered) plants, and the theses. They are the real pull of the library: all those gray-bound theses lined up on the top shelves, one for each student to graduate from the CHC. Creative writing majors' first novels, languages majors' original translations, science majors' lab work, and a whole host of topics in between. I have recently begun work on my own thesis project and have gone from imagining my thesis as some huge obligation looming in my future to seeing it for what it is: an opportunity to explore one topic in an extensive and supported way. It's finally something to something excited about, and I look at those shelves and know my thesis will be up there, bound in gray with my name on it for the world to see for years to come. Opportunity.

I walk the groups through the hall, show them the computer lab and the bulletin board, the colloquia classroom with its oblong table setup, the "shrine to the faculty" with pictures and copies of publications the professors have contributed to, and then the Honors College student lounge with the couches, kitchen, and ostentatious world map. And that's really it as far as the tour goes.

Then come the questions. What are the benefits? Will I be a nerd? Can I graduate in four years? Should I live in the honors dorm? Will this get me into grad school? And on and on...

I love this part, because I basically get to talk about my own experiences. How else can I answer these questions? For me, the benefits are the motivated peers, the engaged faculty, and the community I've found there. I was a nerd already, but some people at the HC don't seem to be, and I don't think my social life has been hurt by Honors College status. I'm graduating in four years with two majors, a minor, and study abroad. I loved living in the dorms, and my seven best friends were all also in the honors dorms. I don't know if the HC will get you into grad school because I haven't applied yet. But I know a thesis project will help you out, as will professors who really know who you are...

And on and on. I talk about my friends and the variety of their majors and study abroad experiences. I talk about Eugene and my volunteering projects. I talk about my classes and coursework and extra-class scholarly work. In the course of my talking I always come to realize how well I've been able to explore my interests in college, and how many cool things I've been able to do.

I think I could have been happy at other colleges. But I think my experience here, at the CHC and the UO, has been a wonderful one. My life feels like it is continuously expanding in terms of my abilities and in goals. I feel more and more ready to face a world that is offering more and more in the way of experiences, options, and needs. I try to tell that to the high school students and their parents. I try to make them see that college, whether here or wherever else they might choose, is going to be a thrilling ride: a time when you get yourself both figured out and shaken up.

I hope they find a college that matches them the way Oregon matches me. I knew the second I hit campus, actually. The rest of my college visits were mere formalities: this is the only school I applied to, and I knew I was accepted with scholarships before Thanksgiving of my senior year of high school.

And I've never once regretted it.