Tours!

I gave my second tour yesterday and it was great!

I felt much less nervous giving this tour and I also think I did a much smoother, better job.

I actually almost wimped out – there were four tour guides available to give tours, and they only had enough visitors for three, so I almost asked not to give one. I’m really glad I didn’t though. I think if I had it would have made it even more difficult to give one next time because I would have built up the whole thing into something much more terrifying in my head!

There are a few reasons I think it went so much better:

1. I wasn't being watched or graded by another student at my college. My last tour was sort of like a "test" to see if I was good enough to give tours. This one wasn't, and so I'm sure that helped a lot.

2. Practice. I'd already given a "proper" tour with lots of prospective students, so by the time I got to this one I felt more confident because I knew I could do it.

3. My group this time was about 75% of the size of my last tour, so I think a slightly smaller group probably made me feel less nervous.

Anyway, I won’t be giving a tour this weekend (it’s Independence Day weekend in the US, so I’m going to see my (favourite) Aunt, Uncle and Cousins. I’m going to be travelling down there with my grandmother – it’s much much easier for her to travel with someone else, but I do tend to find it stressful to travel with her. At 80, she obviously can’t move as quickly as me, and she gets tired easily. She also has diabetes, which means that we have to be careful with what she eats and she gets a little crabby when her blood sugar is off. It’s only a four hour train ride though, so not too bad!