I am an official tour guide of Waseda University, and today I conducted a regular tour. The regular tour is held every Friday morning, Saturday morning and afternoon. Some irregular tours are also held if there窶冱 an apply (high school students are one of the most popular applicants of the tour).

Today窶冱 participants are about 15 people, and most of them are the parents of current Waseda students. There are also a couple of high school students.

Purposes which the guest coming to Waseda and joining in a tour vary from one another. However, I can assume purposes to some extent.
Generally, parents want to know how their children live or study at Waseda because they don窶冲 really have chances to talk to children or talk about children窶冱 college lives even they both live together. Needless to say, when the children live by themselves in Tokyo, there will be little chances to exchange information, and that窶冱 my case. So, I have to tell parents the actual, real college life citing my 窶彙ad窶� examples.
On the other hand, high school students generally want to know how the college students are, how the real colleges are since they don窶冲 have much information about it. Talking to the students and walking around the campus help them grasp the image of their coming future. In this case, I will be their role model (I don窶冲 know if it is really better thing). Another thing that is crucial for the high school students is examinational information, especially exam itself and the countermeasures for Waseda exam. Although I hadn窶冲 joined the tour during my high school life, I also wanted to know about it so eagerly. Studying style is also a common question that the high school students have. Answers for these questions will motivate the students a lot.

Adapting this general needs to the today窶冱 guests, what I better to talk is going to be summarized to how my real college life is. This lets parents know how their children are doing at Waseda and enables high school students to get some images for their college life. In addition to that, I also need to mention how the entrance examinations are. These talks are usually optional to the major talk. The major talk is basically to introduce the buildings and the departments. But adding tour guide窶冱 personal experiences or interests or episodes definitely enriches the contents of the tour, makes guests enjoyed, and at this point, the personality of the guides is shown, and this is very interesting.

Tours are different from one another, and exactly the same tour never happens. Everything changes, and every factor affects the tour, even the weather. This is why I am so attracted to this job and have worked for 5 years.

My impression today is basically favorable. There were no any big troubles, no any puzzling questions. Most importantly, the communication with the participants went very very well. Since I am regarded as an eager-for-study student for a sight, participants often get some negative impressions especially having a conversation. But I am not the person who is awkward to talk to. I am actually so nice to talk to (literally) I believe. So, destroying this image is usually my first thing to do to have an amusing tour for both the guests and I, and today, this went so successfully. There was a lot of laughter throughout the tour. I enjoyed today窶冱 tour, and I am sure I was able to have the participants enjoyed. (This is usually expressed to the reflection sheet which I had the participants written after the tour. These are very objective information for my tour, and the extent of satisfaction is measured by their impressions. But since I haven窶冲 got the sheets today yet, I don窶冲 know if the participants really enjoyed. But it will be okay.)

As a tour guide, I am required to be a professional. In this sense, any mistakes are unacceptable. I am proud of this job, and this proud is indispensable. A tour guide is a representative of Waseda for all the guests who come to Waseda. It窶冱 been five years since I started to work, but at any moment, I have never forgotten about it.

I once wrote about tour guide on the campus news paper issued by the college office. Here is the URL for it. (Japanese text, and no English translation.)
http://www.waseda.jp/student/weekly/contents/2002a/962i.html