NU Declassified: A behind-the-scenes trip through the world of tour guides

Scott Hwang, Reporter
February 13, 2023

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The Daily Northwestern · NU Declassified: A behind-the-scenes trip through the world of tour guides

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We talk to three Northwestern tour guides about the job. What do they do? Why do tour guides matter? What steps do they take to become tour guides? What are some memorable tour experiences?

LIDIA ORTA: I am faster at walking backwards now than I am at walking forwards. I’m a slow walker when it comes to forward walking. But man, I have perfected my backwards walking skills.

SCOTT HWANG: What was your first look at college? If you’re listening to this now, you might be a Northwestern student — go Cats! You might be an alum. Maybe you’re a member of the Evanston community or a high school student thinking about your future. Or maybe you don’t fit into any of those categories.

SCOTT HWANG: In any case, you may have taken a college tour in your lifetime — if not at Northwestern, then somewhere else. You’re led around the campus. You learn about the libraries and the residential life and the research and the study abroad and the dining halls and the traditions. And the person who tells you all of that?

SCOTT HWANG: The tour guide. At Northwestern, tour guides are students who give prospective students an introduction to the campus. But considering how much we hear from tour guides about the university, we don’t often hear about them. That’s what we’re here to do today.

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SCOTT HWANG: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Scott Hwang. This is NU Declassified, a look into how Wildcats thrive and survive at Northwestern.

NICK BAKAYSA: So, The tour guide intro! Exactly what we do whenever we introduce ourselves there. I’m Nick Bakaysa. I’m a senior in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences studying political science, history and statistics. And I am originally from the Indianapolis suburbs, Zionsville, if anyone cares.

SCOTT HWANG: Nick Bakaysa is a tour guide coordinator at Northwestern.

YASMEEN MOHAMMED RAFEE: So hello, my name is Yasmeen Mohammed Rafee. I am a third-year SESP student studying human development as well as minors in religious studies and Middle Eastern North African studies. And I’m also a tour guide at the admissions office.

LIDIA ORTA: Hi, my name is Lidia Orta. I’m a sophomore here at Northwestern studying economics and environmental policy and culture with a minor in business. And I’m a tour guide here on campus.

SCOTT HWANG: Bakaysa, Rafee, and Orta will be your guides to the world of Northwestern tour guiding. Rafee says the role of a tour guide is usually a 90-minute commitment for each tour.

YASMEEN MOHAMMED RAFEE: Pretty much as tour guides, what you do—the short stick of it—in an hour-and-half span, you take a group of 15 to 25 potential students and families, and take them around campus, show them all your favorite bits, tell them all your favorite anecdotes, and pretty much just make a pitch about Northwestern to these students.

SCOTT HWANG: Sometimes making a pitch means exaggerating your love for the university a bit.

NICK BAKAYSA: I definitely put on more of a peppy “I love Northwestern!” tone whenever I’m giving a tour just because at the end of the day, I’m being paid by the university to show someone around.

SCOTT HWANG: Orta says the experience of a tour depends on the tour guide, ranging from the jokes told to the route you go on.

LIDIA ORTA: It’s very flexible. There are a certain number of buckets and stops and things that you need to talk about. That being said, I feel like most guides follow the same route just because we are learning from each other, so the same kind of lines in the same organization get passed down from tour guide to tour guide. But technically there is that flexibility, and if you do go on different tours with different guides, you will notice that they each have their own nuances and are a little bit unique. It just kind of gives that personal touch.

SCOTT HWANG: Bakaysa and Rafee both agree that the personal touch makes the admissions process feel more human.

NICK BAKAYSA: You can read online Reddit forums, you can go through all of the materials that Northwestern or any other university has on their website. But it isn’t unless you’re meeting someone, either in-person with a campus tour or having a conversation with the student online one-on-one, where you can really start to feel what the campus environment’s going to be like.

YASMEEN MOHAMMED RAFEE: The admissions office is seen to be this cold, unforgiving entity that accepts you or rejects you based on your application. All of that feels very much dehumanizing. And I think the tour guides then prove to be a humanizing force that shows the personality, the face, and the love of the school, in this case, Northwestern.

SCOTT HWANG: Aspiring guides go through a training process before they can give a tour to prospective students. The first step of the process? Making sure the guides know the facts.

NICK BAKAYSA: We have around a 100-page manual of just fun facts about Northwestern and all the buildings, all the academic things that are important, all of the sports statistics that we like everyone to have a decent idea of. It’s not a memorization thing. We know not everyone’s gonna memorize 100 pages worth of content, but there are one or two closed-book quizzes that we ask people to do before they transition to in-person training.

SCOTT HWANG: After passing the quiz, the next step occurs during actual tours. Orta says the bulk of the training is in-person.

LIDIA ORTA: First you’ll shadow a few tours. And this is where you don’t say anything, just go along for some tours, then you do some joint tours. So you’re with a trained guide, who’s there in case you forget to say something, you can also learn from them. And at this point, you will have heard this spiel so many times that you are ready to be a guide.

SCOTT HWANG: But according to Orta, the final test can be awkward — you have to go on a one-on-one tour with a guide coordinator.

SCOTT HWANG: As tour guides, Bakaysa, Orta and Rafee have some memorable stories from their tours. One that stood out to Bakaysa was when he learned that actor Steve Carell was on his tour with his son after the tour had already ended.

NICK BAKAYSA: I was like “What? Steve Carell’s son was on my campus tour? And his wife was there? And he was there? And I didn’t recognize him?” Maybe I just wasn’t looking for globally known celebrities to be touring with me on a tour in the middle of July, but he was there.

SCOTT HWANG: Orta’s most memorable tour was a sentimental one.

LIDIA ORTA: One of the most memorable tours I ever had, there was a little girl on the tour. She had to be around 6, 7, 8 years old. And she was the single most excited person about Northwestern I’ve ever seen. Her older sister who was on the tour seemed like every other interested student just asking questions about academics, that type of thing. But after the academic session, she got out and was like, “Oh my gosh, I love how you can study so many different things. And I could study two separate things. And I love how I can do research here.” And I’m like, “You are fully like, eight years old. What are you saying?” That was definitely adorable because I knew I was giving a tour to a future Wildcat.

SCOTT HWANG: For Rafee, some people can turn a normal tour into a memorable one, like a couple she encountered.

YASMEEN MOHAMMED RAFEE: There was this couple walking super slowly ahead of us. And they were like, “We lost our tour group.” And I was like, “Okay, the last tour went out an hour ago.” And they were like, “We’re going to just join you guys.” And I was like, “Sure, come join us.” You know, we’re walking past Main Library, past Deering; I turned around and this couple is gone.

SCOTT HWANG: Rafee paused the tour to find the couple by Deering.

YASMEEN MOHAMMED RAFEE: They were just standing in the middle of the grass, just kind of staring at stuff and taking photos. And then I understood how they got lost the first time. So I asked him if they wanted to keep walking with us. And they were like, “You know what, I’m actually going to just keep enjoying this.” I was like, “Sure, that’s fine.” So that’s the story of how they missed not only one tour group, but two, just because they were taking it at their own sweet time.

SCOTT HWANG: For anyone listening who is applying to colleges or is thinking about it, ask your NU guides for advice. Bakaysa says he would give amazing college application advice because he works so closely with the admissions office.

NICK BAKAYSA: I would be a really, really good high school admissions counselor. I could get you or anyone you know into probably quite a few top schools. I know what Northwestern is looking for and I know a couple other top 10 schools look for the exact same things.

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SCOTT HWANG: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Scott Hwang. Thanks for listening to another episode of NU Declassified. This episode was reported and produced by me . The audio editor of The Daily Northwestern is Erica Schmitt. The digital managing editors are Joanne Haner and Olatunji Osho-Williams, and the editor-in-chief is Alex Perry. Make sure to subscribe to The Daily Northwestern’s podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud to hear more episodes like this.

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