Inside the Life of NMH Tour Guides
_______
Jason Noh ’27
At NMH, first impressions aren’t set by teachers or administrators: they are set by our student tour guides. Tour guides are the bridge between our school and the visiting families, shaping their experience through stories and kindness. Nonetheless, much of the time, the effort and hard work they put in go unnoticed.
As a tour guide myself, I understand the importance of this role. It is more than just narrating the history of buildings; it’s about making connections, showing authenticity, and taking pride in what we do. To gain a better understanding of what makes this role so crucial, I interviewed several tour guides who shared their motivations, memories, and challenges.
Ellie Kim ’27 said that her motivation to become a tour guide stemmed from her personal experience of applying to boarding schools. “I thought it was really important for me to share my experience so that people could know what living in NMH is like,” she said. She mentioned how, when touring schools, she felt By Jason Noh ’27 disconnected from the tour guides who led her around. She explained, “It was difficult to resonate with the tour guides,” because they would only discuss the history and facts. According to Kim ’27, “making genuine conversations with visiting students about topics that spark their interest” is one way tour guides can bolster visiting students’ connection to the NMH community. Instead of saying, “This is the chapel, it was built in 1898,” tour guides could explain how and why it was built, and how it is significant to their own life at NMH. Intimate conversations like such could effortlessly turn a boring stroll around campus into a memorable experience that actually holds weight on decision day
Being a tour guide is not always easy. Tour guides require extensive knowledge of our school, not only its history but also the wide range of programs and curricular systems NMH offers. “It’s difficult when you get someone really interested in something you don’t know much about–theatre, for instance,” Hunter Adamo ’26 said. He added that over time, he learned to make connections despite a lack of knowledge in certain areas. He said, “Everyone has to take two art classes, so even if you don’t love art, you still have some experiences that you can share.”
Kim ’27 explains how she faces a different problem, “Sometimes parents are the only ones who are talking during the tours.” Situations like these make it difficult to learn more about the student, making the tour less productive than it could be. Nonetheless, forced efforts to communicate directly with the student could bring on even more disconnection due to anxiety and whatnot. “Finding talking points related to the student’s interest is a great way of kicking off a conversation,” she said. Afterwards, students tend to find themselves much more comfortable with opening up, and tours tend to flow much more smoothly, all whilst forming bonds.
Among all the programs that aid new students in adapting to NMH, Envision Day is the most influential. Envision Day is a program that invites newly accepted students to experience life on campus through attending classes, eating in the dining hall, and getting a feel for what life is like at NMH. For the new students, especially those who have little to no experience with a boarding school, Envision Day is “a whole new door, like something you haven’t really discovered yet,” as Adamo ’26 said. For tour guides, it is like getting a glimpse of what the future holds. He said, “You can see the people who are going to be part of your community next year.” Adding to that, Kim ’27 said, “You get to know more people as a whole group,” and that it’s gratifying to see them interact with our existing community at NMH.
Tour guiding not only benefits the visiting families, but also the tour guides themselves. As for Kim ’27, her experience in tour guiding helped her gain a better understanding of herself. “In my freshman year, I had an identity crisis, because I’m Korean but also live in the States,” she said. By sharing her story with students who shared similar backgrounds, she was able to organize her thoughts and better understand herself. Additionally, she mentioned that while talking to students who were interested in STEM, she also discovered that she had an interest in it that she didn’t know existed.
