When I was in first year at the University of Toronto, a few of my friends in upper years were tour guides, and they made it seem like the coolest job on campus. They looked so collegiate with their blue vests and lanyards, the pay was good and you could easily give a quick tour between classes and earn a few bucks. A group of my friends all decided to apply together, and, after a surprisingly intense interview process and a lot of memorizing enrolment data that I remember to this day, a few of us earned lanyards of our own.

I gave dozens of tours and talked to hundreds of prospective students in the three years that I was a tour guide. Students and their parents would show up full of nerves, overwhelmed and anxious about the whole university decision-making process. Some students had never been to Canada before, or to a city the size of Toronto, or were the first in their family to apply to university. My favourite part of the job was watching the kids relax over the course of the tour and start to get excited as they imagined their lives as a student.

While a tour is a great way to see a university’s campus and learn about their programs, the real value is in the chance to talk to a current student about what it’s like to attend the school. We have a script, but most of that information is in the school’s promotional material, and we’ve recounted it so many times we could do it in our sleep. We’re happy to go off-script and talk........

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