Every once in a blue moon my job has a perk. There aren’t many, working for a public school and all, but there is one major perk:

Colleges market to counselors because they think counselors are deciding for the kids who gets their parents $30,000 tuition a year (this is partly true).

Some marketing genius has realized that getting one more kid (hence $80,000+) to come to your school is worth treating their counselor well. 🙂
And so, counselor ‘tours’ were created. How it works is a particular college sets up a tour of various colleges in their area and then begs counselors pretty please to come. They fly the counselors down, they put you up in super nice hotels, wine and dine and entertain you the entire week. At every school you visit you eat a full course meal, are entertained by some college musical group and visit the nicest classrooms and dorms on campus. You feel like a celebrity and every time you smile at the new wireless courtyard the colleges think you’ll go back to your high school and tell kids:

“Rutgers? Pshaw! Who CARES if they one of the best musical theatre programs! You should check out this small school in Virginia called Sweet Briar College. You’ll eat like a Chuck a Rama queen every night!”

It’s a win win situation. Especially when our guidance director BEGS us – no – REQUIRES us to go on these free trips. And all he asks in return is for us to miss work for the week.
Well……. I guess if I HAVE to.
🙂
In September I’m going to visit the Blue Ridge Mountains, stay in a swanky hotel, eat full course meals 3x a day and bask in the beauty of the landscape and capitalism.

(paid for by the following institutions: Hollins U, James Madison U, Lynchburng College, Radford U, Roanoke College, Sweet Briar College, U of VA, Virginia Tech)