Admission Ambassadors

            Here at ETSU, I am an Admissions Ambassador, which means I give college tours to prospective students. I have to admit, I really really enjoy doing it. Every Thursday at 1:30, I suit up in my bright yellow ambassador shirt and khaki pants and head to the Welcome Center where I take high schoolers, parents, transfer students, and whoever else that signed up for a tour around campus explaining buildings, events, and overall why ETSU is a great school.

            What I think is so cool about being able to do this is that I have an impact on people. That student who is trying to find the college for them—I am influencing that. What I do and say could shape the rest of their life. College is where they will make lifelong friends, really grow and figure themselves out as a person, and also get their degree, which will then shape their career and job for the rest if their life. The fact that I have an effect on their decision, be it they go to ETSU or somewhere else, blows my mind.

            To become an Ambassador, I had to write a paragraph about a word I came up with using the words “ETSU Admissions Ambassador”. I wrote about the word “Roots”, and how a person’s roots in college affect their whole life. Along with the paragraph, I had to do an interview. The interview questions were pretty typical until the last one, which my interviewer said was going to make or break my interview. The question was, “If you were an ingredient in a cake, what would you be?” It made sense that it was considered an important question, especially because on tours you never know what the people will ask, and you need to be able to answer without questioning it. I answered with, “Sugar, because that’s what makes it sweet, and without sugar, cake would just be weird bread.”

One of the details that I like about the Ambassador program is that it is purely volunteer. We get no money or any other incentive other than a free ambassador t-shirt, which is our uniform. We make the choice to spend three to four hours each week of our time to be able to do this. The fact there’s no real incentive other than feeling enjoyment makes only the people that want to do it show up--meaning people will care and try to make the tour as informative and helpful as they can. So many people quit after the first meeting because they didn’t think it was worth their time. However, I believe it is totally worth my time. It makes me proud to be a Buccaneer and hopefully help inspire a couple others to be the same along the way.