Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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My daughter and I have been touring college campuses to gather information about schools she might apply to.

We've learned a lot of stuff about tuition and fees and housing expenses and meal plans, but we've also observed some things that you don't find in the glossy brochures.

From an extremely small sample consisting of three families from Northern Virginia, I have concluded that people up there don't know much about Roanoke and aren't very curious about it.

I guess when you live in a megalopolis with tentacles extending ever southward and housing costs leaping ever upward and the pace of life growing ever faster, a quaint town in the Blue Ridge Mountains just isn't on your radar.

In my younger days, I'd have attempted to woo the heathens with descriptions of the Roanoke Valley's charms.

Now, I just let them live in their own universe, content with knowing that a peaceful, pretty place awaits our return.

Plus, I figure that if the other kids' parents have never been to Roanoke and don't have any questions about it, then they probably don't plan to visit Blacksburg.

That's one less child competing for a spot at Virginia Tech, and that's all right with me.

Fervor of the young

The second thing I've noticed is that the toughest job on any college campus is that of student tour guide. At some schools, tour guides are akin to entertainers and sideshow barkers.

The scripts, which they deliver from memory, apparently are written by former editors from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The spiels are long -- upwards of an hour, in some cases -- and filled with details only a reference librarian could love.

When I look at a school, I'm not much interested in amusing incidents that are said to have occurred in the president's former home or the rock that students prankishly painted or that young lovers spooned behind in the good old days.

I want to know about campus safety (nothing to worry about anywhere so far) and how many kids desert the place on the weekends (none, ever, or so I've been led to believe).

But it's hardly fitting to hector the poor guides, who walk backwards, shouting their pitches and stumbling into trash cans and steps before dozens of parents and prospective students.

Their exaggerated enthusiasm -- which can wane when exhaustion sets in, particularly on hot days -- is unlike any I've seen outside of a Disney park.

When we visited Longwood University in Farmville, the guide, a smart senior from Roanoke, remained effervescent despite 80 minutes of leading us in and out of the rain.

You really have to love your school to put yourself through it.

The circle of life

The most surprising thing to me has been how much emotion a campus visit can evoke.

When I sit in the auditorium for the opening remarks by an admissions officer, the hopes of all of my ancestors seem to well up inside me and tug at my heart.

My mind scuttles back to Fort Worth in 1968, when I arrived at my school, Texas Christian University, unaccompanied by anyone, and watched the glittering Texas families arrive for orientation.

My subsequent grades may not have reflected it, but I knew I was among the luckiest people in the world.

A walk across a campus with my daughter, envisioning her hurrying to classes and wondering whether she will be happy there, heralds a developmental step for both of us.

It helps to have seen her brother go through it in Blacksburg, and to accept that the school she chooses, or that chooses her, will shape her in unforeseen ways.

All we ever pray for is for everything to turn out OK.