The two sides of our Carolina

I had barely been back in town two hours this summer when one of my new superiors turned to look me squarely in the eye.

“You’re a little underdressed.”

I was at my first training session to become a student tour guide, and I was wearing, I thought, college-kid clothes.

This wasn’t great, he said. I was supposed to dress nicer than a normal student, while still posing as a normal student.

It was all about the image.

Campus tours, no matter how the average prospective student perceives them, have become a science.

There’s marketing involved, and there’s effort put forth into selling an image of the idyllic Carolina, the nation’s first public university.

There’s a litany of things tour guides are encouraged to mention, another of those we should try to avoid.

And along with dressing nicely, there’s a whole host of unspoken rules. Don’t put down other schools, not even Duke. Don’t talk about drinking, even to condemn it. Avoid mention of scandal; walk slowly; talk loudly. Share personal experiences. Laugh.

Then there’s plenty of trial and error mixed into it, too — the stories that get funnier the more times you tell them, mixed with the ones you learn will always fall flat.

Telling groups you can tack food money onto the bottom of your tuition bill, for example, makes the teenagers excited and the dads cringe.

Explaining the merits of SafeWalk reassures the moms while the kids’ eyes glaze over.

And playing the role of the Northern girl on the Southern campus — I really did once take a class that turned into Me vs. Those Born Far Below the Mason-Dixon — makes everyone laugh, every time.

But as candid as I’ve been with my tour groups, there’s one thing I’ve never told any of them: what my second job is.

I held two roles this summer. And when I started, I thought they couldn’t be more different. Three or four times a week, I act as the University’s cheerleader, steadfastly skating over its institutional flaws. And the rest of the time, I’m at The Daily Tar Heel, a University watchdog trained to home in on campus missteps.

But as the summer winds down, the similarities between my two jobs have grown more obvious than the differences.

Know your audience. Act as a storyteller. Be honest and say it well, in good sentences.

Because when it comes down to it, everyone here — prospective student, overeager parent, community member — deserves to know the Carolina we’ve all gotten to know, its quiet intimations rather than its glorified brand.

And whether we found that through reporting or through day-to-day interaction, through semester after semester spent on campus — well, maybe those aren’t so different, after all.