Opinion: Going about your day-to-day campus life while a group tour walks by can feel awkward. Here’s how best to handle the anxiety of being observed.
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It’s made you self-conscious before, hasn’t it?
Maybe you’ve been working in the EMU while a crowd of parents and budding students shuffles by, and you can feel the stares scan you. You immediately realize how hunched your back is over your laptop, how trash your outfit is that day, how greasy your hair is and now you’re overthinking the Panda Express carton next to you. To them, you’re the picture of academia: a model college student they hope to become.
For the people on these tours, what they’re seeing is a simulation. They see an average day on campus unfold and imagine themselves or their child fitting into this picture. They’re eyeing up every student they see because the students are a representation of what they might look like if they went to this school.
What they don’t see is that the student they’re observing is not an actor paid to reflect them. It’s a real 18-year-old hiding a very real panic attack about being the 300th student to not pass Math 111 (this term). That isn’t a model feverishly researching for a term paper on their laptop. That’s a senior responding to a text from their roommate saying they somehow ran through their house’s drywall playing Beer Pong.
We didn’t sign up to put on a show for these tourists, but there you are being watched while you try to get a research paper done on the last day before Canvas locks the assignment. Being looked over by a tour guide group can be a stressful experience for any student on campus, so I’ve made a list of things you can do to better blend in and avoid the embarrassment.
Look like a scholar
These tours are expecting to see intelligent young minds blooming at this institute of knowledge, so don’t disappoint them. Wear a gown and your graduation cap while you study in the library before you even graduate. Hold an open book in each hand, one being “Fahrenheit 451” and the other being “Jane Eyre.” Look pensively into the distance and mutter to yourself about Plato. Wear a monocle. Grow a beard. Be the scholar they expect to see. It may help to carry around a lab coat and goggles with beakers of chemicals to blend in more.
Smile and laugh in a diverse friend group
If you really want to meet expectations and not be embarrassed by a staring tour group, become a poster for the campus website. The tour group will be thrilled to see they stumbled by such a great group of friends who all completely coincidentally each represent a different ethnic identity and sexuality. The university values diversity so much that they’ll be right on time with that check they promised you.
Scatter
As soon as a tour group wanders by where you are, immediately get up and run away. Leave your things, as well. If the entire EMU fishbowl immediately evacuates when a group walks in, maybe they’ll begin to understand that they’re upsetting the vibe.
Spread a rumor
I saw an article by College Raptor that gave advice to touring college students to approach the students of the university they visit and ask them their genuine thoughts on their life on campus. I think this is bad guidance for two reasons. The first is you’re not supposed to tap on the glass of the exhibit because you freak out the zoo animals. The second is you give too much power to a possibly disgruntled Oregon student.
Maybe I’m evil, but it would be all too easy to come up with a story to freak out a 16- or 17-year-old. “Yeah, the classes are cool and whatever, but did you hear that Riley Hall is haunted?” All of the sudden you aren’t anxious about being asked a question and now they’re freaked out about the rats that crawl around the Student Rec Center you told them about.
Stare back
Even out the tension of being observed by returning the puzzling look back to that kid who’s been watching you sit on your phone while the tour stops. Blink a bunch of times; make them think you’re trying to send them a message.
Ask if anyone has a lighter
I would bet the tour guide will lead everyone away from you if you loudly ask everyone. Don’t mention what it’s for.
“Get out!”
The most awkward situation I’ve heard of is people wondering if they were in the frame of someone taking a picture of campus on their phone as the tour walks by. However, there is a canonical and completely understandable response to this. Widen your eyes, run up to this person and grab them by the shoulders. Start yelling “Get out! Get out of here while you still can!” Someone will pull you away eventually, and you can get back to what you were doing.
