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October 07, 2005
Behind the Scenes: A Recruitment Trip
Thanks to my colleague, friend, and fellow Case alumna, Judy Weiss, who inspired me to share some of the quirky experiences that can happen on a recruiting trip.
As most of you know, we admission counselors spend a lot of time on the road in the fall and spring, so hotels become home away from home. One thing that I find strange is that every time I turn on a TV in a hotel room, the volume is always automatically set to the maximum. The default channel is the hotel welcome channel. So, I am immediately blasted with a woman's voice (the same voice at every hotel, no matter what state) saying, "WELCOME! WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR STAY WITH US!" Of course every remote is different, so it usually takes a few seconds to find the volume button to get it to a normal level. Sometimes, if I am really thinking ahead, I will pre-locate the volume button and already have it pressed down when I press the power button. My own little "beat the soundblast" game.
I had a funny hotel experience when I visited Atlanta last month. In the weeks before the trip, my husband and I had been joking about the pet cricket that always seemed to end up in our garage at home. We would be sitting in the family room and hear, almost every night, the echoing "chirp chirp, chirp chirp" of one lone cricket in our garage. On my first night in Atlanta, which was my first night away this season, I prepared all of my college fair materials for the next day and sleepily settled into bed. I reached over to turn out the light on the nightstand. My head fell onto the pillow. Not 5 seconds after the light went out did I hear a loud "click click, click click."
"What the heck is that?" I thought. I sat up, turned on the light, and looked around. Silence. Nothing unusual. Light off again, head on pillow.
"Click click, click click, click click." Light on. Silence. Light off.
"Click click, click click." Light on. Silence. Light off.
"Click click, click click." You get the idea. Eventually, when the light was on, I just happened to notice a tiny shape on the wall behind the lampshade. I looked closer. . . you guessed it. A tiny light brown cricket, doind a very good job of camouflaging itself against the wallpaper. Well, there was no way I was going to be able to sleep with that racket going on all night, so I quickly scooped the little cricket into a cup and carried him outside since the window didn't open.
Light off. Silence.
I guess the hotel was just going out of its way to make me feel at home by supplying me with my very own cricket.
Christine DeSalvo Miller, Undergraduate Admission
Posted by cmd10 at October 7, 2005 02:19 PM
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