CAMPUS TOUR

Columbia, Missouri:

When it comes to selling their brand, Americans are no match! Just kidding.

But seriously, I've never seen or heard of this - a campus tour! The universities do have the tours of their campuses here for the prospective students and educators. And the one that we went through in the University of Missouri, Columbia, was a brisk but refreshing odessey into the memory lanes of the abode of education.

But first, the update (since I'd been kinda cut off from the net for two days): Sunday we arrived in the University of Missouri, Columbia, after a freezing two-hour drive from the Kansas city Missouri, only to find ourselves in the lap of one of the most beautiful towns I've ever seen so far. This is where we are taking our classes at a two-week orientation seminar. The School of Journalism, our host, is the oldest journalism institutions in the world, instituted by Walter Williams in 1908.

The temperature: 4-5-6 degrees celsius. By the way, it's the beginning of the spring! And if that's not enough, the days were misty for the first couple of days. We could see the Sun smiling on us for the first time late Tuesday afternoon. That, however, is not to say there's any respite from the cold. No way.

Coming back to the walking tour of the campus: It's a professional service that some of the under-graduate and graduate students offer to the prospective high school students considering to take a course in this university, or visitors like us.

The University has about 60 students on the tour-guides team, a petite-looking but enterprising Ashley McDonald, one of our guides, said. She along with the other guide Anthony Jackson took us around the campus to introduce us to the exquisitely built structures and the history of each of the departments.

Interestingly enough, the bust of Governor David R Francis, installed outside the administrative building of the University, has a story attached to it. Students believe that rubbing the nose of the bust yields 'A' grades, and so it's almost a ritual for the students to rub its nose before the examinations.

"That," chuckled our guide Anthony, "is the reason for its nose to turn yellow." The opinion is divided though. While Ashley has got the A-grades always, Anthony hasn't.

The job, for which the university pays them, requires of these student tour-guides to research diligently and use enterprising ways to introduce their campus to the visitors. "Each one of us has his or her way of conducting tours," Ashley said.

Ashley and Anthony walked backwards (facing us while walking backwards, I mean) all the way through the sprawling campus of the university. "That's what we prefer; it's our way to conduct a tour," the two said as they narrated the story, or stories, around the several buildings on the campus of the university.

Ashley said: "I'm proud to be a Mizzou (student of the University of Missourian) and its heritage." Well, as we realise, we too have become a part of it in a small way.