So you're a tour guide?
Yeah, I started my freshman spring and this year I do special tours.
Special how?
They're not the regular admission tours. For example, I gave a tour to Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia, and his daughters.
It seems like there have been a ton of tour pranks recently. Have you gotten pranked yet?
Yeah, I was scheduled on April 1 to lead the Bronx Prep Charter School on a tour, so I blitzed all the '11s on the Dimensions team and told them I had a tour at 2 p.m. on April Fool's Day. But they told me they weren't going to do anything.
But....
But within two minutes of starting my tour, I saw Pen [John Vineyard IV '11] sunbathing topless in the rain in front of McNutt. Two beautiful girls were slathering sunblock on him, and someone wrote "I heart D" on his chest. When he saw me, he came running up and gave me a huge hug and got sunscreen all over my jacket.
How did your tour group react?
They kept talking and laughing about it. The best comment was some girl who said to me, "That don't look like sunscreen."
What do you think about these pranks?
It's one thing at different schools when they have funny signs, but it's something else completely when it's to the extent of raiding trips. Every person who has been on a tour that has been pranked is impressed by the dedication and social outgoingness. It shows we're not caged boring academic fiends.
What sort of outrageous questions have you gotten from your tour groups?
I've been asked about my sex life more than once.
How did that happen?
Well, I always tell my groups that I want to create an open forums -- you can ask me any question you want. I'm very honest with them. If you tell them one bad thing, they trust you from the beginning. On one of my first tours, about 15 minutes into the tour -- so, relatively early -- we were walking by Mass Row. I told them I looked at living in a single freshman year, and these boys raised their eyebrows at that. They kept asking things like, "So was it a good sized room? And would you say you had a lot of visitors?"
And at this point you still didn't know where they were going?
No! Not at all. So then one said "How would you say your sex life is?" And I just stopped the walking tour and looked straight at him and said "Healthy, thank you, and HERE is the Parkhurst ..."
Any others questions that stand out?
Another tour guide, Corey Cunningham, was asked by a prospie's mother, "Is there any wind at Dartmouth?" He told her we have an average amount of wind, and she just replied, "Good. Because I don't want my son to go to a school where there's no wind." And that was it, that was all she said during the entire tour. We also get asked about Grey's Anatomy and Superbad. One boy asked me, "Does anyone named McLovin go here?" I've also gotten "Barack or Hillary?"
Best part about leaving Los Angeles for Dartmouth?
Not running into the SoHos at my high school.
SoHos?
Sophomore Hos. You don't use that? Basically, I like not being around superficial, catty LA. I like the fact that I can walk around in sweatpants for four days and people still talk to me.
So what else do you do?
Socialize like a mofo. That's about it. Facebook. Shower. People-watch. Laugh a lot.
This is starting to sound like a bad Facebook profile.
Yeah, I sound like a socially awkward stalker. I swear I'm not. I'm a socially awkward non-stalker.
