After two and a half years of giving campus tours for the undergraduate admissions office, there are plenty of times I’ve felt like an idiot.

Of course, there are the times when people ask me questions that I can’t answer. How am I supposed to know if the pool at Pottruck is long course or short course? And if someone could please explain what that means, it would be much appreciated.

In addition to unanswerable questions, I also feel pretty stupid when people ask uncomfortable questions. It’s hard to talk about drinking on campus with both honesty and tact. There’s nothing like the disapproving glance of a parent when you confess that Penn doesn’t have any female-only housing.

And then there are those things that we encounter every day and pay little attention to, but don’t really go over well with parents. I’ve had tour groups accosted by fraternity members handing out party flyers. I’ve led prospective students and parents past couples heavily engaged in PDA on Locust Walk. You name it, I’ve seen it.

Despite all that, my most awkward tour guiding moment was this past Saturday. All tour groups are now required to go through a mock dorm room in the Speakman basement of Ware College House. Because the hallway and room are only big enough for one group at a time, a tour guide often ends up standing awkwardly with their tour group after realizing that another group is in the room. Usually, the time is spent answering miscellaneous questions, but my group seemed not to have any this weekend.

Luckily, one of the students living on the third floor of Speakman came to my rescue, blasting music for everyone to hear. I managed to grin my way through Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and Jefferson Airplane’s “We Built this City” despite a surprising lack of amused looks from classic-rock loving parents. But I figured that as long as our resident DJ stuck to G-rated classic rock, I would be okay.

Unfortunately, I thought too soon. The music suddenly switched to a song whose opening bars I recognized, but couldn’t quite place. Soon after, I heard, “They see me rollin’/they hatin’” Yes, there is certainly nothing like the looks on a bunch of parents’ faces while they stand around listening to Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’.”

So, a special thanks to the mysterious Quad DJ that provided me with the most awkward tour guiding moment ever. And an even bigger (and more sincere) thanks to the tour guide that vacated the mock dorm room before the song got to lyrics like, “There’s a full clip in my pistola/turn a jacker into a coma.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 2:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.