They manage to walk backwards for miles without tripping over while explaining the Dartmouth-Plan to a group of high school kids in less than three minutes.
No, they're not magicians. They're Dartmouth tour guides.
James Lipscomb '97 has been leading tours since Spring term.
"I was always real psyched on the school -- I figured it was a great opportunity to show people around and have some fun with it," he said.
Lipscomb said he really enjoys "talking up" the school, and every time he finishes a tour he leaves "a little more excited about Dartmouth."
Though tour guides undergo training before being allowed to lead people around campus, things can still go wrong.
On a recent tour, Lipscomb said he had just finished explaining to his group that in Hanover cars will always stop for students wishing to cross the road, as he attempted to lead his group across the street.
"Just as I said that some guy came storming down the road in his car," Lipscomb said.
Forced to wait for the group to cross the road the driver "laid on his horn and flicked me off," Lipscomb said.
On another tour, Lipscomb said he was walking backwards when a "kid came up behind me on his hands and knees."
Just before Lipscomb was about to trip over the child, one of the women in the tour group screamed, and the child got up and ran away.
But most tour guides experience less traumatic days.
This summer there are 41 students guiding packs of would-be Dartmouth students and their families around campus, according to Deborah Van Dorn, administrative assistant in the Admissions Office. Tour guides are paid $6 for each tour they lead during the summer, she said.
The summer is much busier than other terms for student tour guides, according to student tour guide coordinator Tim Chow '96. Tours leave four times daily from McNutt Hall compared with twice daily during any other term.
Most tours are a blend of factual information, personal anecdotes and, of course, questions.
Tour guide Diane Whitmer '97 said she tries to create a dialogue with the members of her tours.
"I try to make my tours as interactive as possible" rather than firing off facts, Whitmer said.
Tim Redl '97 also said he dislikes lecturing people.
"I love the small groups, and I love people who ask a lot of questions," he said.
For the most part, tour guides said they don't have too many problems answering questions.
"If worsecomes to worse and you don't know the answer," Whitmer said, "you just let them know."
Almost all tour guides agree their least favorite question is: "What do you like least about Dartmouth?"
"I usually just say the work," Lipscomb said. "School would be much more fun without the work."
Nevin Patton '97, who led tours between Spring and Summer terms said he hates being asked what happens when students do not receive housing.
"I don't like talking about that," he said.
Tim O'Leary '97, a tour guide since his freshman spring, said some of the hardest questions he has been asked have come from guidance counselors.
O'Leary said he once led a tour composed completely of guidance counselors, which he described as a "nightmare."
Kim Papa '97, who has been leading tours as long as O'Leary, said her tour for guidance counselors was "one of the best tours I ever gave because they were just so knowledgeable about the school."
Papa said it is less an issue of difficult questions, than of difficult people.
With difficult people, Papa said, tour guides just have to make the best of it.
Papa said what really irks her is when people on the tour laugh loudly when she's not telling a joke.
"A few weeks ago I had a mother and a daughter on my tour and the mother began throwing questions before the introduction," Papa said.
The daughter, she said, kept leaving the tour to find Dartmouth students she knew.
Papa said it is also difficult leading tours of younger students from private schools.
"Sometimes when they're too young, they're not so interested," she said.
Patton said his tour group once included an alumnus of the College who spent "lots of time griping ... about how much the College had changed."
Patton said the alumnus complained the College was cracking down too much on fraternities and that Dartmouth was "becoming too much like Yale."
O'Leary said he finds it interesting that on every tour he encounters the same types of personalities.
He said the essential ingredients in a tour include impatient fathers, who ask what percentage of graduates go on to investment banking and warm, smiling mothers.
Patton said on his tours he always has a father who asks direct questions and holds his chin and a mother who wants to know about dining services and dorms.
"The parents definitely seem to ask more questions than the students," he said.
As for the students, "in general you're going to find students you would run into on campus here," Lipscomb said.
"But there are some random people that you can tell right off the bat won't be coming here," he said.
Lipscomb said that most of the people on his tours get excited about certain aspects of Dartmouth like the Appalachian Trail and the bonfire.
Papa said being a tour guide has been a great experience.
"I thought it would be a cool thing to do to show people how much I like Dartmouth," she said.
Papa said it also gave her an opportunity to "give back to the school."
