Tourguiding

I recently got into a rather heated conversation with someone who was once a college tourguide. Now, I was a college tourguide at Cal. It was, I believe, the single greatest thing I did at school. I mean, sure I discovered supernovae while in college, but tourguiding...tourguiding was where I learned about life. And where I made the best. friends. in. the. entire. world. I am still in close contact with many of the people i tourguided with. I have been in tourguide weddings. And when I think back to college, it is the days in the visitor center office that I think of with the largest smile. Now, it might not be this way at other universities, but at Cal, the tourguides were like a family. We were all a little crazy about our Cal facts, and we loved each other for it. We were the only ones that would don incredibly unbreathable windbreakers at 10am on a Saturday to walk around in the rain with a bunch of cranky 17 year olds and their over zealous parents. We all knew how to work backwards (I was successful at this even in flip flops), we could recite the history of any building on campus in a heartbeat (I bet most of us still can), and we all had our own bad jokes we used everyday. We had all stopped on the hidden floors in the campus tower, the Campanile, to see the dinosaur bones stored there. Most of us knew how to sneak into the campus library even if our group was more than 10 large. We loved what we did.

What I remember more than work though, was the after work parties and hangouts. We used to have the best time! Blue and Gold jello shots by the casserole dish. Raleighs "staff meetings" where everyone had their own pitcher, and the waiter (always hot) always got a HUGE tip for putting up with us. We wrote new lyrics to the Cal Drinking Song which we would then sing at the top of our lungs throughout the bar. The 16 hour days on Cal Day that would lead to exhaustion drinking (oh Cal Day). The A's games. The trips down to the Stanfurd farm to take tours of their campus and ask every obnoxious question in the book. Football game tail gates, frat parties with the tourguide frat boys, bonfire parties, and BBQs on my back deck until 2am. It was a damn good time. And to this day, my tourguide friends and I laugh and laugh about some of those nights.

Anyway, so this friend of mine. He was a tourguide at University of Texas at Austin. So, our debate started off about the number of Nobel Prizes each school holds, stemming from the recent Berkeley win in Physics (woohoo!). He claimed UT has the most ever. He is wrong. I'm not saying it's Berkeley. but I know it isn't UT. That's right, I looked it up. I threw back with the fact that our library is clearly bigger than UTs. He then says their campus populations was larger (fine, it is). Cal was founded earlier. UT was ranked higher (uh, clearly not true, and I did not let him win that one, don't worry). Anyway, it was a fun argument, and we paused it when we both ran out of facts (I might have been using 2003 facts for a little while, which may or may not still be 100% true). It made me miss it though. I loved that school, I loved that time in my life, and while I love my life now, there is something so special about being part of such an awesome community, and within that community, having such a great group of friends. On tours, people would always ask me why I picked Berkeley. I was always honest, it came down to money and my visit to the campus. But, I would always look them straight in the eye and say "I made the decision to come here, and I have never looked back. It was the best decision I have ever made, and I do not have a single regret." And I still dont. So, here's to my great tourguiding years from college, and the friends who I made who during those years who are still putting up with me. Oh, and of course, Go Bears!