Posted in On the Road
Who Needs Sleep? I've got Tufts2016.
It's 5:29am and I just arrived in Singapore after high winds forced my plane to temporarily land in Nagoya, Japan. I haven't eaten anything in 9 hours, and I haven't really slept in nearly 40. In 6.5 hours, I'll need to start setting up an event for a few dozen people. I ought to be miserable, but all told, I'm awfully cheery. I mean, regardless of sleep deprivation, in a handful of hours, I'll get to ACTUALLY MEET the students I just spent the last three months trying to admit. All these students who I totally fell in love with (in a not creepy way, I promise) and soon I'll get to tell them, face-to-face, why. Jumbo Love from the other side of the globe, Dan
Job Perks
I am not a wild animal veterinarian. I am not a zookeeper. I am not a park ranger. I am an admissions officer at Tufts University and yet this fall I played with lion cubs, observed white rhinos, visited an elephant orphanage and had to break for a heard of buffalo. Lucky does not even begin to describe how I felt this fall when I travel to Africa for Tufts.
Now, my recruitment territory is typically domestic (like this year: Silicon Valley to Santa Barbara, the great state of Tennessee and part of Upstate New York). I’m more like the second baseman that gets called up from the minors: when there’s a trip abroad that needs covering, Jen Simons calls me into her office and offers me a chance of a lifetime. In the fall of 2008 I traveled through parts of Northern and Eastern Europe (Finland, Estonia, Russia and Ukraine) with admissions reps from Columbia and Northeastern because we thought my engineering expertise might be of use in a part of the world filled with potential engineers...
Tennessee Eats
When you work in admissions and have a territory for a while, the counselors start to get to know you pretty well. I’ve been reading Tennessee for long enough that the counselors I visit have my number: after asking me all the usual questions about last year’s yield, new majors, and changes in the application process, they ask me where I’m going to eat and dole out eatery suggestions. I’m developing a bit of reputation on the road and back here in Bendetson: food is never far from my mind (if I were writing the Tufts supplement I’m sure at least one of my answers would be about food and its role in my family as centerpiece to everything!). One of my absolute favorite parts of travel season (and if you read our previous admissions committee blog you know this already) is trying out new restaurants. It’s a little bit of anthropology - what does the food, the ambiance, and the clientele tell me about the local culture.
It seemed appropriate that when I visited Memphis is year a friend reintroduced...
Road Weary...
*Originally Posted on October 27th, 2011
One by one, my colleagues are returning to Tufts as the recruitment travel season winds down. Here’s what one of them looks like this afternoon. After spending four weeks on the road he took the “red eye” from LA to Boston last night (which is never fun) so he could be on campus today for our diversity recruitment event. On the upside: he discovered an intriguing new use for a college fair banner! (I sent him home to get some rest.)
A Day on the Road
*Originally Posted on October 7th, 2011
As I type, 13 Tufts admission officers are somewhere in the world, visiting high schools. I just finished my own four-day swing though 16 high schools in southwestern Connecticut (also known as Fairfield County) before I head out again next week for a quick trip to DC. “What do you do when you visit a school?” my mother wondered the other night, and her curiosity prompted this quasi-live action account of one of my days on the road earlier this week.
6:50A: Travel jitters: I’m up before my alarm rings. The coffee from the pot in the hotel bathroom isn’t bad…
7:47A: I have five visits scheduled in three different towns. I’ll probably miss lunch so I make a quick visit to the “bistro” in the hotel lobby for some breakfast (which I don’t normally eat, much to my aforementioned mother’s lament). When I’m away from home my diet hits the skids (a bag of Doritos often suffices as lunch) so I choose the menu’s ”healthy option” (egg white, spinach...