First of all, I want to say thank you to the two students I met on Friday in Medfield who both were faithful readers of my blog... I appreciate the compliments!

I know I have said this before, but I will reiterate that travel season is one of my favorite times of the year... I love being out on the road and visiting new high schools and cities I haven't been to before. Right now, I am in one of the favorite restaurant spots for admission counselors everywhere when we are traveling -- Panera! More variety than the same old fast food choices AND free wireless internet so we're able to keep up with what's going on back at the office. Actually, I am not traveling for PC this weekend... I moonlight as a "DJ" (or as I prefer, "radio personality") for a Top 40 radio station in Connecticut on the weekends, and surprisingly did not have to go into the station today, so I figured I would catch you up on the past week on the road:

Part of the Massachusetts territory I am responsible for is new to me this year-- the Concord, Lowell, and Wellesley areas west of Boston. On one hand, I love having new travel territories-- new areas to explore, new high schools to visit, etc... On the other hand, I am not 100% familiar with where all of the high schools are-- and when one visit ends at 9:15 and the next starts at 9:30 and the schools are 15 minutes apart... well, there isn't much time to get lost! Actually, I prefer to call it "taking the scenic route" -- I'm not really lost, I just don't know the quickest way to get there (HAHAHA). Anyway, I did take the scenic route to one of the schools I visited Friday during the three school mini-fair program I was attending... but luckily there was enough time between the visits (more than that aforementioned 15 minutes) that I still made it just before the students arrived in the cafeteria for the fair! (And even the admission counselors from other schools who had GPS systems in their cars had some trouble-- the actual high school address was different than the address their GPS had... can't always trust those high-tech systems... sometimes, you just need to drive around aimlessly and stumble upon the school!)...

Yesterday also marked the first day this year that there was a fire drill at one of the schools I was visiting... always a good time! Although nothing will match my first year, when SIX schools had fire drills during one week of visits! A nice way to break in a rookie admission counselor! At one of those visits (at an upstate New York high school that will remain nameless), one student was so interested in PC that I continued answering his questions while standing outside of the building (in a light rain shower) for 15 minutes. Hey, I might as well do something while I'm waiting for everybody to leave and reenter the building, right? And by the way, all of us in the admission world love it when students are loaded with questions at our high school visits-- it makes the whole experience much more productive for everyone involved (hint hint!!).

As I mentioned on Friday, I will be back in the office for a few fleeting moments next week, so I will stop this rambling and share more "road stories" then. I hope that you will prepare some questions of your own for that admission counselor who will be visiting your high school soon!!