Honest Tours

Seeing all sorts of tours (and now trolleys) around has made me wonder: how much would you be willing to pay for a tour that actually gave an honest appraisal of a city or school?

Every time I walk by a tour group on campus, I mutter "God, I hate this school" in a barely-audible tone, hunch over, and stare on my feet until they're no longer paying any attention to me. Then I revert to my usual chipper self and giggle maniacally, especially if I was with someone and we had a little turn in the conversation about how bad things are at the University of Chicago before switching back to whatever completely irrelevant. The best, though, was last summer's biochemistry class when we all had a nice loud conversation about how it was so hard and we were all failing even though that was all we were doing....

I figure it evens things out a bit.

Tours on this campus are so...horribly inaccurate (looking for a politic way to say this). My favorite, which made me walk faster because I actually couldn't hold the laughter in, was the one where the tour guide explained that graduate students really respect the undergraduates on this campus for all their hard work. I have to wonder if this dude was ever in a class with grads.... (They don't care! There are more important things to worry about out there. Also, the excessive dedication of the undergraduate class is confusing and annoying. Who the fuck cares about some obscure irrelevant interruption? Stop interrupting my science class! Wow, that felt good to get out. Even if I know the person who did it will not see this.)

But anyway. I really wish I'd gotten actual facts from the tour guide when I visited here...although maybe I did. Campuses change really fast, considering the turnover rate, and considering that sometimes the administration decides that a new direction completely contrary to the past traditions is a good thing.

Cough, cough.

As for a city...I think a tour of a place like Chicago would be best from someone who had recently moved away or recently revisited after moving away. You'd get the pros and cons and an actual comparison. It's like when people who've lived here all the time have no idea what a beach is supposed to be like, which leads to travesties like Centennial Beach out in the 'burbs. Its bathrooms aren't even filthy!

So...would you pay for a tour of university from a recent graduate? Just let me know. ;)