I’ve just returned to my desk after overhearing our summer tour guide, Jared, engaged in conversation with a prospective family – in Chinese. Jared, who just completed his freshman year and participated in Deerfield’s summer trip to China, has been eager to try out his linguistic skills and has done so with much success. Bravo, Jared!
Jared also exemplifies our tour guides who go the “extra mile” when guiding prospective students and their families through our beautiful campus. Donna Kimball, our visit coordinator “extraordinaire” received the following note from a family who visited last month:
Many thanks for your help in facilitating our enjoyable campus visit last Friday. It was most pleasant to realize the spirit of helpfulness and generosity is still the essence of Deerfield. This was evidenced, not only by your help, but also by our personable guide Jared’s attentiveness to our wishes. He did much more than just merely walk us around in the predetermined route. During our tour Jared pointed out examples on campus which exemplified the Deerfield spirit such as the various scoreboards with the substitution of “Guests” in place of the usual “Visitors”. Our sincere thanks for a most helpful and revealing visit.
But Jared is only one of our excellent guides. I’m impressed with all of our Deerfield tour guides: their warmth, their genuine interest and pride in sharing with prospective families our campus and our community. This summer, we’ve met families a record number of families, many of whom have come from abroad: China, Japan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Egypt, Nigeria, Ukraine – the list goes on. The American families we have met this summer show great geographic diversity as well, from New Hampshire to California, from Illinois to Texas. Next week, new and returning students will arrive on campus, and I’m looking forward to hearing about their summer adventures in every corner of the U.S. and the world.
