Sarah Darby regularly gets in thousands of steps walking backwards around campus. “I have never felt more burn in my legs. It’s like you’re using muscle groups that you don’t use when you walk forward. I was sore,” says the sophomore political science and psychology major after she got her dream job as a Grit Guide last spring. Generally tours last a little under 90 minutes, and Darby said that her legs adjusted pretty quickly. 

Surely in the 1960s, when UMBC only had four academic buildings and no residential life yet, the tours were quicker, or at least shorter, right? Frances Allen Nickolas ’70, American studies, says: “Not really.” According to Nickolas, one of the early tour guides on campus, the tours would usually take over an hour as the interested visitors wanted to see the new school that had sprouted up in Catonsville over the last few years.

“We would talk about the majors UMBC offered and share perspectives from our own majors,” says Nickolas. “We would tell them about our experiences with the courses of study and the professors. I truly loved it because I got to meet different people all the time, and I just really enjoyed it. Because UMBC was much smaller in those days, later I’d run into some of those visitors again, but as students this time.”

This is something the modern tours have in common, says Darby, a Sondheim Scholar who enjoys giving her tours an in-depth view of her majors and favorite areas on campus (The Commons and the Library). But the thing she values most is getting to know these potential Retrievers. “I have made so many genuine connections with people when I’m out on tour—I enjoy making jokes and making them laugh,” says Darby. “Some people might think it’s ‘just a campus job,’ but I love seeing the high schoolers’ reactions to campus. It’s rewarding in a way that none of my other jobs have been. I really love it.”