By Lauren LevyThe Daily Northwestern
It had been fairly uncomfortable when Weinberg senior Lindsay Dudley led her campus tour group to the rock, only to find the campus icon painted brown with the word “poop” scrawled across in giant letters.
A few days later, she figured it would be painted over. And it had been. As her new group of students pointed out while laughing, the two Ps were now neon Bs.
“Needless to say, it was a pretty embarrassing couple of days,” she said.
Such can be the indignities of working as a Northwestern tour guide. After giving enough tours, said many tour guides, you’re bound to have a few embarrassing or awkward moments.
With hundreds of tours a year, the Office of Undergraduate Admission has its hands full trying to sell the university to prospective students and their families. The office employs about 70 student tour guides to show interested families the campus at any given time.
Dudley, who coordinates the tour groups, became a guide in the spring of her freshman year. In her three years, she said she has given about 50 tours.
Dudley said she enjoys talking to the students and the parents because she remembers when she was a prospective student and had a lot of questions about the school.
“I guess I wanted to be involved in the recruiting process at Northwestern and inform other prospective students about Northwestern,” Dudley said.
“I guess it’s sort of a reciprocity thing,” Dudley said. “I feel like if I can give that to someone else it’s a nice act.”
The urge to give back often lands tour guides in awkward and odd situations.
Taylor Pomeranz, a McCormick junior, said on her first tour she had a mother and father stay for 45 minutes afterward asking her “weird questions.”
“They wanted me to give them the exact date in November that people start wearing jackets and the exact date in April or May that people start wearing flip-flops again,” Pomeranz said.
On the same tour, Pomeranz forgot to walk down the steps by the Block Museum and ended up taking her group through the parking lot, which is a big no-no for tour guides, she said.
“I was kind of freaking out in my head, and then I turned around and you could see the beautiful Chicago skyline, so I pointed it out like it was part of the tour and got a lot of ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs,'” she said. “Then I felt a little better.”
McCormick sophomore Josh Abecassis, who has given only two tours so far, said he also has gotten strange questions.
“A lot of people ask me if the library is sinking, which is kind of awkward, and I just kind of give a stare back at them confused.”
Reach Lauren Levy at [email protected].
