While ITMI offers good training for many careers, most of us feature such enticing day dreams as visiting the polar bears, the penguins, or at least pink flamingoes as part of our work. Some of us actually do those things. Others find themselves too tired to day dream from days of trooping along with 8th graders through the various sights to be found in our nation’s capital. The compensation for this is an attractive rate of pay and lots of work every Spring and we do have some Pandas and other residents from out of town in the National Zoo. The ticket for this career is a DC Tour Guide License…and if you have any political sense at all in this political town, membership in the Washington Tour Guide Guild. The Guild provides useful training, a mentoring program for new guides, and other services such as a daily telephone update on matters of interest to any local guide. Two Yahoo email groups that provide additional aid and comfort are the ubiquitous ITMIClass214 (open to all) and DCGuides (open to licensed DC guides and primarily Guild members).
This is my third season of this sort of activity, punctuated by somewhat more exotic work closer to those day dreams. If anyone is interested, I will be happy to share more comments on my work…but I am more interested in what you have to say about your experiences. To close I will attempt to add a photo to this showing myself in the midst of this sort of activity at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center.