1. Meeting the students
There are few things more satisfying than being able to geek out to a prospective student about something you have in common: whether that be your major, an interest, or location. It’s an awesome opportunity to display your passion for your university, major, interest etc. It’s also super fulfilling to watch that student start to fall in love with your university like you did when you first started: watching them get excited and start to ask more questions or talk about what they want to do there. It’s unbelievable how rewarding that is.
2. Learning the most random facts
Naturally as a tour guide, you have to know some “fun facts,” but some of these facts are just out there. Why do I know how our university transported books from one library to another? Why do I know exactly “Row Row Row Your Boat” was written or that the number of floors that our library has is some inside library nerd joke about the dewey decimal system? Because I’m a tour guide.
3. Dad jokes
Any tour guide can tell you that no tour is complete without some dad jokes. You don’t always get a laugh, but when you do, it’s a true accomplishment, especially if you get that one stoney faced person to crack. Tour guides also like to share jokes, which is super helpful if you are not a pun master, and gives you all a joke of your own if you’re all using the same one.
4. Open Houses
These are both the best and worst parts of being a tour guide. Open Houses are exhilarating, exhausting, fast paced, and a whole lot of fun. From guiding students, to waving, to parking cars, Open Houses are opportunities for tour guides to shine. We get to be high energy problem solving machines, and we have a blast. 5. Growing your confidence
When you start as a tour guide, there’s always nerves and worries about if you will remember everything, or if you will freeze, what if something goes wrong, etc. But once you give your first successful tour, you gain more and more confidence. It’s like a light switch gets flipped and says, “hey, I can do this!” Being a tour guide gives you so many opportunities to be your best self and succeed that you can only come out of it more confident than you started.
6. Learning professionalism
We all love having fun with each other and the families that come to visit, but professionalism is also very important as a tour guide, and its something we work on as a team. We keep each other in check and encourage each other to be mature and appropriate. It’s a wonderful and fun way to become more comfortable in a professional climate.
7. Getting in those extra steps
Tours can give you over 10,000 extra steps in a day, which for a couch potato like myself is fantastic. It’s a fun and productive way (that pays) to get up and get moving. It’s also a great way to win at step competitions.
8. Getting the weird questions
As strange as these questions may be, its kinda fun to get them so you have something to laugh about later. From your oddly specifics to your out of the blues, every tour guide has their weirdest questions to share.
9. Being recognized as a guide
Whether by faculty, staff, or families, being recognized as a guide comes with a sense of pride. For people on campus, its confirmation that you’re representing the university well. For families, its a way to know that you really made an impact and made that personal connection. The best way to get recognized though is by an new student at orientation, because then you know you did your job well.
10. The community you build.
Tour guides are some of the friendliest, most caring people you will meet, so it’s very hard not to make friends with them. You can bond over weird tours and fun memories, as well as inside jokes and tough transitions. They’re more than your coworkers – they’re your family.
All photos courtesy of Millersville SHARP Team