A few weeks ago, we began offering campus tours and like many colleges, our tours look a bit different from the past. We’re keeping tour groups intentionally small and spending as much time outside as possible. In addition, just this week, Holy Cross was featured in an article by Inside Higher Education about the future of the campus tour.
What an exciting moment it was to once again welcome prospective students and their families to our campus. As excited as our guests have been, our tour guides have been equally as excited to show off their school, their campus and to talk about their experience as a Holy Cross student.
There was so much excitement, in fact, that all the available tours for the summer quickly booked. Recently, we’ve been able to add more tour spaces and there’s now availability throughout the rest of the summer.
With the return of visitors, I am reminded of a blog entry I wrote 13 years ago about campus tours as some of it bears repeating. On college campuses, too often we see a family pour out of their car, run to catch the tour, the information session and then sprint back to the car to make it to the next campus for the next tour and information session.
I’m here today to call upon everyone just to slow down.
Seriously – slow down.
Billy Collins ‘63 (U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003) said the following about education:
Although teaching and learning themselves have been motorized by the hyper-pace of information, it is good to remember that the true tempo of education has always involved a deceleration. . . . a shift from the urgencies and demands of the world to the more leisurely pace of discussion, the cadence of study and reflection, the seeming stop-time of engrossed thought.
When visiting colleges this summer, instead of sprinting from car to tour to info session to car, I want to encourage families to simply slow down. Schedule your visits so there’s enough time to linger, to truly experience a college campus.
The most valuable insight from a college visit often comes when you’re not looking for it – a door held for you when you least expect it; the friendly smile from a professor who passes you on the sidewalk; or a conversation between students you overhear at the campus coffee shop. You’ll only notice these if your pace is leisurely and you just might experience the best part of education – the deliberate and delightful deceleration.
~Drew Carter | Deputy Director of Admission
