Senior Scaries: Giving tours, taking time
In each installment of “Senior Scaries,” Erin Ye ’26 confronts her senior-year fears in her final three quarters at Stanford. You’ll hear about the triumphs and tribulations of tackling the Senior Bucket List and hopefully feel less alone in the never-ending soul search that comes with growing up.
At the end of every prospective undergraduate walking tour (PUnT for short), tour guides conclude by sharing why they chose to apply to Stanford and what they’ve learned since choosing to attend. As a graduating senior and someone uniquely prone to sappiness, I get a little bit emotional every time I reach my end-of-tour soapbox. I don’t think my “Why Stanford” is anything special, but I’m grateful that my weekly PUnT affords me time to reflect on what I’ve gained from being here.
I applied to be a tour guide during my sophomore year at the encouragement of my friend Elanna, whom I met working grad crew the summer after freshman year. Elanna is the type of person who could make any high schooler want to go to Stanford. She is simultaneously a perfect public speaker and extremely down to earth, a combination that inspires you without speaking above your head. As we bonded via manual labor in the statistics courtyard, it clicked to me that part of my “Why Stanford” was meeting people who immediately felt like lifelong friends.
My college experience can be traced in steps. I’m a proud campus walker, mostly because I never fully learned how to ride a bike. I briefly had an electric scooter during junior year that was stolen after three weeks, which I took as a sign that I was never meant to have it in the first place. I tell people that I like walking because it gives me time to take in my surroundings; I like saying “hi” to friends on the way to class and getting stopped on the Row for a brief chat. I love giving tours on Tuesday mornings or Friday afternoons, when lots of people are milling around and I run into friends who wish me a happy birthday. That’s another part of my “why”: this beautiful campus that maximizes chance encounters.
The PUnT is 90 minutes long and nearly a 2-mile round trip, but there are still countless parts of Stanford that don’t make it into the route. I don’t get to show visitors my freshman dorm, Lake Lag or the GSB Coupa, all of which have defined my Stanford in some way. I can only mention the farm and the cactus garden by name, can only hope that visitors believe me when I speak to the beauty of the Law School Terrace or the Sculpture Garden. I’m also partially glad that I don’t have to show them everything, like the food in Casper Dining or KSig after a party.
On a more metaphorical level, the content of my tour captures much of what I love about Stanford but grazes past an underbelly of growing pains that have come with being at college. Do visitors need to know about how stressed I’ve been from midterms, how I’ve worried myself sick over school and jobs and friends? How honest can I be about Stanford’s shortcomings and failures? To me, these struggles aren’t reflective of the overarching culture, but to someone else they might be, and that makes it a matter of perspective.
At the end of my PUnT, I tell visitors that I applied to Stanford on a long shot, couldn’t believe I’d been accepted and committed as soon as my mom told me I was allowed to go. I used to think I was a big fish from a small pond getting let into the ocean, but now I think Stanford is more like a collection of tide pools, where everyone is the biggest fish in their own niche pond of interest. This place has opened up my worldview in more ways than I can say, and I’m grateful to have taken a chance on myself when I knew and feared nothing.
The other day, I spoke on the phone to a newly admitted student, also from Long Island, who was nervous about going far from home for college. She asked me questions about the weather, academic demands and what it was like being away from family. I warned her about winter quarter rain, because no one had done the same for me. I told her that I had also been scared as a freshman, but that Stanford started to feel like home once I let myself believe that I belonged, and that I can’t imagine my life now without this place and the people it’s brought me.
She sounded so excited and so relieved that if I could have bottled up the energy in her voice, I would have told you that was the best way to sum up my “why.”
The post Senior Scaries: Giving tours, taking time appeared first on The Stanford Daily.