The best 30 minutes of your life

One part of this job is giving information sessions to prospective students and their families.  Once you have given a few, you can sometimes find yourself on auto-pilot and not as engaged with the audience as you would like.  I try not to make this happen by changing up the order of my session, adding new jokes to the session every now and then and making it sound like a person and not a recording.

I also try to go to the lobby about 10 minutes before the session begins to see how large the crowd will be, the energy of the room and those types of things.  While in the lobby, there was a mom who said she was just going to go on the tour and not listen to the session.  When I asked her why, she responded: I have heard these sessions all week and I do not want to be bored and listen to the same thing again.  So, I responded with “but you have not heard my session.”  I could tell she was still a little skeptical when she asked, “what makes yours so different and unique?”  So I responded with “you will just have to come in and find out.  It will be the best 30 minutes of your life.”  She chuckled and I could tell she was still a little skeptical, but she did come in and listen to my session.  I was sure to pay attention to her reaction as I was telling stories, and facts about the college and I could not tell if she was enjoying it.  When I was done, she was sure to come back and say; “that was not the best 30 minutes of my life, but you were pretty good.  Thanks for the session.”

So, even though we do a lot of information sessions, we try to jazz them up a little bit for your enjoyment.  So laugh at our jokes, try to be engaged and make it the best 30 minutes of your life (or at least of your day).

– Randy Tripp