Problems with 'truth'

August 24, 2007 —

It's a sad day when you lose enthusiasm for something you were genuinely excited about, and excitement is exactly what I felt when I gave my first tour of SVSU as a Campus Ambassador sometime last fall. Nearly a year after giving tours to an innumerable amount and variety of people I can't say that is a feeling that has come over me in a long time.

I am in no way attempting to belittle the admissions office or other campus ambassadors. I can remember many telling us of the importance of the job, and I wholeheartedly agree them still. As with many other things, however, I find myself slowly let down by my fellow human beings.

As a Campus Ambassador, you are meant to shine a positive light on the University for those that are seeing it for the first time. I see the logic behind this. You want the uninformed to think highly of our institution, and there is little reason not to. I never saw the logic, however, in consistently being only positive. SVSU is by no means perfect, as nothing really is.

Thus, after a period of doing the positive-swing-on-everything type tours, I began to find more merit in doing the honesty-is-the-best-policy type. I did this because I found myself at the end of many of my tours not feeling right, and I felt the same sort of vibe from those I was leading. I thought my new angle would improve this feeling, but I still felt that same vibe at the end of tours after being more honest with them. I wasn't negative. I love SVSU and am glad I chose to come here. But still, parents and potential future students alike still seemed uninterested, sometimes even more so than before, while on the tours. I began to meticulously analyze the situation.

I began to remember acting classes. People would respond negatively to constructive criticism in the classes, seeming to only want positive feedback, but isn't the point of taking an acting class? How can you improve if all you receive for feedback is "great job!" I also recall a moment in a 400 level communication course when a student complained that the reading was too difficult. I offered my opinion that should be expected in a 400 level course, and many students seemed disgruntled by this.

People claim to want the truth. However, more and more I'm finding little validity in this claim. Why? The simple "truth" is that people want to be able to criticize themselves. If SVSU is presented as perfection, they can better attack that perfection later. So it's not that people don't want the truth; it's that people can't handle hearing it from someone other than themselves. For if you are the one that must come up with the truth, you can in turn decide not to.

Nearly a year after becoming a Campus Ambassador, I find myself lacking enthusiasm, but not for the role of a tour guide. I find myself lacking the enthusiasm for humanity once more - lacking the enthusiasm to maintain an absurd charade for the sake of other's maintaining it. The bottom line is, I'm sick of people saying they want something that they really don't.