The Tour

So let's lay something out. You go to college and for however many years you're there, you're really free. I mean to me that's the true appeal of college and the thing that I miss the most, when I think back on it. You can wake up when you want and you can do what you want, especially if you don't have a job alongside your schooling which I didn't at the time that I first started. The job came later.

But even with the job it was only part-time and even with the classes I soon did find that attendance wasn't really mandatory. At least not in the classes I took it wasn't. Provided you showed up to the first few and submitted all the assignments when you needed to you could make it through. Maybe not with the best grades, but you'd be fine.

So for however many years you were there, you were pretty much free. Nothing really pressing that you had to do. No real obligations.

For years.

So in exchange for that you agree to frosh week which is ostensibly about orientation and getting you familiar with the campus and the city around you and where to find and do everything you need to but frankly let's be honest, the whole thing is really an excuse to try to indoctrinate you with school spirit likely so you feel some kind of obligation and tie to the place if or after or when you graduate and they can hit you up for alumni donations afterwards out of some combination of misguided nostalgia and hollow school spirit.

Point being that when you're excited to go to school, to go to college, you're probably looking forward to a bunch of other things. For my part I was excited by the freedom and getting away from my small town. I was excited too by the classes and getting to learn something. I was even excited to be in a city, even if it was only a medium sized one and not like a capital that felt like the center of the universe.

What I was not excited about was anything involving frosh week. Not anything official at least.

No one signs up to college and thinks to themselves, 'Gee I can't wait for someone with way too much school spirit to try to make me into a carbon clone copy of themselves. I love aimlessly listening to facts about things that I will never use again in my life. I can't wait to have someone cover in excruciating detail all the architectural details that went into this mundane building that probably would have been torn down in any other city with better history to keep and treasure.'

Absolutely no one thinks that, which is why I have formed my theory that when stuck on a tour just like this one under circumstances identical to this one, there are three types of people present in the crowd.

Which one do you want to be?

OPTION ONE: The person excitedly chattering and talking with the tour guide, clearly thrilled to be there. A little suspiciously so.

OPTION TWO: Entirely checked out and thankful the tour at least involves walking otherwise they would surely be asleep. Currently doing their level best not to visibly check their watch lest they let the tour guide know they have not heard a single word said so far.

OPTION THREE: Snarkily chatting under their breath about the tour, the guide, the town, and every last thing around them. Trying to entertain themselves and, by the most generous estimates, the one other person that will talk to them who is equally as insufferable and egotistical as they are.

Three options and yet I didn't fit into any of them before this moment but that's more the exception that proves the rule than anything else, I think that's how that goes.

And I don't know what you would do and I don't know which I would choose right now.

But I do know which one I chose the first time around.

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