Confessions From A College Tour Guide

I have been giving tours of the UNL campus for three years now. I have loved walking around campus and telling people from all over the country about UNL, but the time has come to move away from this job as I start student teaching this next semester. And truthfully I haven't loved every tour. As I take on my last 2-3 weeks of tours, I'd like to let it all out. This is the tell-all from a tour guide.

1. Yes, I always walk backwards. If you know me, you might be wondering how many times I've fallen doing this, but my first confession? I have never fallen walking backwards. The one and only time I have fallen on a tour was when I was walking forward up some stairs. Also, people tend to give a wide berth to people walking backwards around campus.

2. Stop asking me about the parties on campus. While movies and television make it sound like that is what college is all about, it isn't. Sure, you can go to parties as much as you want. College allows freedom. But that's not what I'm hired to talk about. And the parents that tell their stories don't help at all.

3. It's hard for me not to laugh when kids that tell me exactly what they are going to be doing in 10 years. Please don't hold on too tight or you might miss opportunities. Explore. Try new things.

4. Sometimes I feel more like a struggling comedian than a tour guide. Smile people! I am trying very hard to reach out to you and if I don't get any response, I don't know how to help you in your decision. I remember I used to be super embarrassed about how much my dad talked on tours, but now I love parents like that that help me to understand what the student likes to do or wants to know.

5. For those of you who are current students, yelling out of your windows as you drive by does not help me at all. I thank you for your efforts, but it just sounds obnoxious.

6. I hate suite style freshmen dorms. I'm sorry. I know they are really nice and big and less people per bathroom, but I can't tell you how many times tour groups have asked me, "Does anyone live here?" Truthfully, I'm not really sure.

7. You shouldn't judge any place by what it looks like in February. Seriously. I hate giving tours on 5 degree days when everything is dead and students look miserable. It's not the campus, it's the weather.

8. If you are making a decision where to go, go with your gut. I think UNL is awesome. I really do. I have tons of great things to tell you about it (and I will if you get me started) but it's not for everyone and I understand that. Don't decide based on statistics and percentages. Or because it's "different" or far away. Go because it feels right. Go because it feels like home.

The End of A Book

The first thing someone said to me today was "You look tired." Which basically means I looked terrible. This was probably because I stayed up too late trying to finish the book I was reading. I've done this a lot in my life, holding on to every bit of energy I can at 2:00 in the morning to find out what will happen next. It's exhilarating. But it's what comes immediately after that gives me that terrible morning-after look. The book is over. Whether you are content or mad at the author, smiling or crying, every book is the same. It ends. And then I have to stay up in bed for the next hour contemplating the life of the characters I might never hear from again.

I know this sounds depressing and I don't mean it to be that way. If it was that bad, I wouldn't read like a hundred books a year. Right now, though, I feel like one of the books of my own life is ending. A lot of people talk about the "chapters" of their lives, but I don't think my life is one big book. Rather, I think it is several books, a series if you will, with different settings, plots, and characters.

After high school, I started a new book. I closed that back cover and could never go back to reading it for the first time. I'm neither entirely glad that book is over and done with nor am I crying over the ending. Like with every book, I moved on, excited for the next one, but I can always go back and reread to refresh my memories or revisit characters of my past even years and years later.

This year, many of my friends graduate. I finish my last "real" classes and start actually teaching. I don't know where I'm going or where they're going. I'm very excited to start reading, but just like the book last night, I am at the moment that I must come to terms with an ending. I have met wonderful people in this book. I couldn't imagine a better cast of characters. Thank you to everyone who has made my last four years an incredible story.

Some Fantastic Stress Management

At 1:30 pm today, I hadn't started the paper. Not a single word. It was due in exactly four hours and I wasn't even sure what I was going to write about. I hadn't thought about it for even a moment. It was panic time.

I'm not very good with stress. It affects my sleep, social life, diet, and overall health. School has always been a major contributor to such stress and no matter how hard I work to spread out the workload or organize myself, around this time in the semester I end up super stressed out about life.

Today, though, I handled it better than I probably ever have. Leaving my class at 1:30, I headed to my room, completely nervous about the paper. About a block away from my apartment I suddenly turned left and headed to the Rec Center. Yep, you read that right. The Rec. With four hours to crank out a paper, I decide to not even work on it. Was I crazy? Did I just give up? I'm actually not sure what happened in that moment, but that left turn turned my whole day around.

In between each crunch on the ab machine, I took deep breaths until I lost most of the nervous energy. On the arm machines, I created a thesis statement in my head. While working triceps, I noted all the supporting materials I would need to gather when I got home. By the time I starting on the rowing machine, I was confident, actually whispering lines out loud and repeating good ideas so I wouldn't forget. Introduction. Row. Thesis. Row. Point about listening in the classroom. Row.

I walked out of that weight room straight to my desk at home, typed the entire paper and took an hour nap before heading to class. I'm completely serious. No sitting in front of my computer for an hour. No getting up and sitting back down 10 times. No lethargy. A workout, a paper, and a nap. Boom, boom, boom.

Sometime my mind just needs to slow down. You wouldn't jog in place all day and then run a marathon and I can't expect my mind to be running all day going nowhere either if I want it to perform well. I took some time, cleared my mind and then set it to specific training so it could execute a task. And was that paper written perfectly? Of course not. But you can't win them all. I'm just glad to finish the race today and keep my health in the process.

I'm Going to Scotland!

Hello! So, I've been waiting to post this and I'm not sure why. I've been committed to this trip for months but it hasn't seemed real until recently. I am completing my goal that I blogged about probably a year ago and studying abroad. I will take a month between June and July and travel to the University of Stirling in Scotland. I will take two classes while I am there, one writing and one education course, and hopefully do as much exploring as possible too. I just wanted to let all my readers know about that. Hopefully, I'll blog throughout the trip as well.

 Other updates on my life: Although I have been in school for four years, I am going to go another full year at the University of Nebraska. I will be mostly student teaching throughout that time. Because that will take up a lot of my time, I will most likely stop giving tours on campus, although I have really loved that job over the past two years. I am also planning on moving off-campus for the first time next year. Most of my friends are graduating and it seems like another big transition in my life right now.
And I'll leave you with some interesting facts you might not know about Scotland:

-The Hamilton Mausoleum in South Lanarkshire has the longest echo of any man-made structure in the world; a whole 15 seconds.
-Scotland has more than 600 square miles of freshwater lakes, including the famous Loch Ness.
-St Andrews Links is considered the "home of golf"; the sport has been played there since the 15th century.
-In the north east of the country, girls are called “quines” and boys “louns”.
-It is home to the oldest tree in Europe (pictured below), a twisted yew which has stood in Fortingall for 3,000 years. According to local legend, Pontius Pilate was born in its shade and played there as a child (It's the third picture above).
-The raincoat was invented in1824 in Scotland by Charles Macintosh, a chemist born in Glasgow. (I guess it rains there a LOT)
-The inventors of the television, telephone, and penisilun were all born in Scotland.
- It is home to 19 universities and institutes of higher education, including St Andrews, where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met. 
-Famous Scottish writers include Sir Walter Scott and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 
-Around 13 per cent of the population has red hair, with 40 per cent carrying the recessive gene.

A Collection of Words

I just happened upon a document on my computer from my freshmen year full of quotes. I used to keep collections of quotes like this all the time. I have no idea what led me to do this, but reading back on what I collected told me a lot about who I was at that time in my life. And it was amazing how many still rang true to something going on in my life right now. I also helped me remember some books I read forever ago. I think I might pick up this habit again. You never know when those words can pop up and make my whole night. I just picked out a few of my favorites from the old document to share tonight. :)


- "If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong." The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian-Sherman Alexie

-"Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?" Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Waterson)

-"Don’t take a fence down until you know why it was put up." Robert Frost

-"You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace." Angela's Ashes-Frank McCourt

-"I have to tell you, I love living in a world with no clocks. The shackles are gone. I’m a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time." Love, Stargirl-Jerry Spinelli

-"It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you." Atonement-Ian McEwan

-"I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles." Wintergirls-Laurie Halse Anderson

-"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared." The Giver-Lois Lowry

-"A friend of mine once defined love as finding someone you can talk to late into the night." Maximum Ride Series-James Patterson

-"I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you." A Northern Light-Jennefer Donnelly

-After you get stung, you can't get unstung, no matter how much you whine about it." The Secret Life of Bees-Sue Monk Kidd

-"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."-Winston Churchill

-"Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people...Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked." A Little Princess-Frances Hodges Burnett

We Love Being Loved

We, as humans, love love. And it's not necessarily being "in love"; it's being loved. It's why faces light up when your dog greets you at the door. It's the reason my dad instinctively squeezes the shoulder of his family members nearby when he's nervous. It's why people are constantly texting or Facebook messaging (or even blogging), reaching out to someone that loves or cares about them.

Unfortunately, I think this addiction to love often gets us in trouble. We settle for relationships with the wrong people because we believe they love us and may be the only ones who ever will. Or we break off a great relationship because the love is no longer enough to satisfy the addiction. Some of us turn to harmful activities to fill the void of love we don't believe we have.

Yes, love is wonderful. But it is also destructive. This is a very short post but it's something that's been on my mind lately and something I know a lot of my friends and family are dealing with right now in one way or another. So here's my message for the day: Someone loves you. You may think you have "no friends" or that "no one will ever love you" but it's just flat out untrue. So relax. Smile. And have a lovely day ;)

There is So Much Good in the World

"What is happening to the world?" "This country is going to hell." "Kids these days..." It seems to me that everyone wants to think of the world as a downhill slide. We constantly focus on what is going wrong in our world instead of what is going right. Yes, I world has problems. It always will. But if there's one thing I believe most in the world, it's that there is so much good. The human spirit is still alive and well and I know it can outshine the worst of circumstances.

One night last week I took the bus and a young man was standing at the front of the bus, chatting with the bus driver and she was laughing. After wishing her a good night, he got off on the next stop and I was the only one left on the bus. The driver turned to me and smiled and told me that boy had stayed with her for the last hour as she rode around the loop between campuses just because he thought she probably got bored driving all day.

Recently there has been a group on campus that does "High-Five Friday" where they give high fives to everyone that passes by the union. Most days I'm looking down at the sidewalk and they make me look up and look the world in the eyes.  It always makes my day.

During the holiday season, I volunteered at the Center for People in Need and it was amazing to see how many people were there to volunteer their time, money, and items to insure everyone was able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Last semester, I saw some kids in the dining hall sit down with people who is eating alone several times. I remember how lost I was my freshman year and every time I hear, "Hi, my name is...can we sit with you?" my heart warms a little bit.

There are so many wonderful hearts out there. Not even somewhere far but right in your own city, your own neighborhood, your own building. There is love. There is kindness. There is compassion. And it is beautiful.