Crabby Moms and Snow

Today was an incredibly long day. I left my hotel at 7:30am (granted, I probably wouldn't have needed to leave that early if it wasn't imperative that I go out of my way for a cup of Peaberry coffee) and didn't return until 9:15pm. Luckily, I chose comfortable pants.

The day started off on the right foot with that large cup of french vanilla Peaberry coffee. I just love that stuff. They closed the shop closest to my hotel, but luckily there's another one about a mile away... and I think it's well worth going out of my way to start the day off right. From there I drove about an hour to Monument (just north of Colorado Springs) for a couple high school visits. No one wanted to hear about St. Olaf at the first school, but I had 8 students interested at the second school. Not a big surprise since one of our recent alums is a music director at the school.

After the high school visits, I had 5 senior interviews scheduled at the local Barnes and Noble Bookstore. The first student didn't show up, so after a few minutes I logged into email to make sure she didn't email me a change in times. When there was no message, I got nervous that I was at the wrong location so I asked one of the employees the address and she confirmed that I was in the right store. Finally, after 15 minutes, I heard my cellphone ring letting me know I had a message. Sure enough, it was an overly annoyed mother letting me know they were at the B&N, they had looked all over for me and couldn't find me so they were standing in the lobby of the bookstore. I went right over to them and apologized for the misunderstanding and you would have thought I had just insulted her daughter, the mother was so irritated. The daughter was nice enough, but the mom never really warmed up to me after that. I thought I had made it clear that I would meet students in the cafe section of the bookstore, but apparently I wasn't as clear as I thought. Maybe we just missed each other while I was up at the counter getting a bottle of water, but there were St. Olaf materials on the table so I'm not convinced they looked very hard. And why didn't they look again instead of just standing in the lobby of the store???

The rest of the interviews were great. Good kids, some very kind parents, lots of genuine interest in the college. On to the Phil Long Expo Center for the college night. The place was packed. Tons of families which meant that some of them had to wait in line to talk with reps. I was deep in conversation with a family, who I will admit was sort of annoying to me because the girl was so soft-spoken I could hardly hear her, the mom kept feeding questions to the daughter who would practically whisper them to me (maybe my lack of hearing had something to do with my congestion ... or could have been the hundreds of people all talking at the same time) and they did seem to stand there for a looong time asking me questions. But it would have been hard for me to move away from them on to the other family that had been waiting. The other family (family #2) finally lost their patience and left in a huff to go to another table.... only to return in a few minutes to interrupt my conversation with family #1 to say they'd been waiting for a long time and wanted to have their questions answered.

I was appalled! This mother was so incredibly rude, it was unbelievable. She basically told me that they had been waiting for a long time and had to have their questions answered. Luckily, family #1 was gracious enough to thank me and move on to another table, while Mom #2 went on to tell me that they couldn't find any information on our music scholarships in our materials and seemed to hold it against me that she couldn't keep all the colleges straight with the deadlines and application/scholarship requirements. ARG! What makes her think her time is more valuable than anyone else's and she shouldn't wait in line like everyone else?

You know what I did? I killed her with kindness. Even though on the inside I wanted to dish it right back at her, I was patient, explained our process in great detail and put on my happy college fair face.

What is with people???

Needless to say, I was happy to pack up my materials when the fair was over. When I walked outside, I was greeted by slushy crap falling from the sky. The weather was better in Minnesota than it was here! It was a cautious drive back to Denver, but I made it safe and sound.

It was a successful day despite the fact that two moms were irritated by me. More of the same tomorrow... only this time in Fort Collins.

Jilli