“You were my tour guide when I visited,” is often what someone would tell me upon meeting them — again — whether in a class we shared, a lunch in the Caf that I somehow finagled my way into, or especially while spending the two weeks in Ytterboe Hall with incoming first-year fall athletes for pre-season cross-country. (I had the privilege of being the upperclassmen cross country runner “in residence” for my new teammates while the veterans were up north in a cabin somewhere doing their own training.)

In J-term of my first year on the Hill, Dan Franklin, the head of the tour guide team in the Admissions Office and a faithful member of St. John’s Lutheran Church in town, encouraged me to take on a role that, little did I know, would be become a core identity for me over the next three and a half years. As I write this as a fifth and final year doctoral student at Princeton Theological Seminary, I am happy to say that this “vocation” of being an ambassador for my school and community has continued to shape me all through grad school.

I learned as much about the families, their own communities, and even my own school as our visitors learned from me. Did you know that our climbing wall in Skoglund is several feet taller than the one in Carleton College’s athletic center? Or how about that our science building is platinum LEED certified? (For those for whom that means nothing, let me put that in layman’s terms: it is the highest level of ecological sustainability that a building can receive.) And speaking of limestone buildings, I once gave a tour to a student whose grandfather started the Limestones. I idolized those guys. (But, I wonder, was there a secret stash of Cream of Wheat next to the Malt-o-Meal vat in Stav for breakfast? How were they able to commit such a transgression? I still lose sleep over this.)

“I learned as much about the families, their own communities, and even my own school as our visitors learned from me.”

Henry Burt ’16

By the time I was a second-semester sophomore, I was promoted as the student leader of the tour guide program, overseeing all of my peers as I trained them, evaluated them, and paired them up with prospective students by virtue of their shared interests.

Some of my fondest memories were the “off schedule” plans with prospective cross country runners who I gave tours to, especially during the two summers when I worked in the Admissions Office (the picture is from my summer of 2014). After I got off from work at 4:30 p.m., I’d book it to Tostrud to lace up my shoes and do a 5-miler around the St. Olaf Natural Lands with, say, the local from St. Paul or the international student from Japan. St. Olaf has strong partnerships with United World Colleges from all over the planet, and our Admissions Office does well to incorporate their leadership and their perspectives into its fleet of tour guides.

I think going to St. Olaf was the best decision of my life. I could see that for myself within the four years of being there. I am not surprised at all to see how it continues to pay dividends for me as a lifelong learner, leader in the classroom and the pulpit, and an ambassador to my community. It is where I call home, and it is where I am called back to every day in order to critically and faithfully engage with an ever-complexifying world. Fram! Fram! and Um! Yah! Yah!