Walking backward, but moving forward
MIZZOU TOUR TEAM
Third
the
charm
time's
Though turned away twice before, student finally lands position as campus tour guide
Cole never went down easily despite being turned down repeatedly by different organizations. “I’ve always tried again. I bounce back pretty quick,” Cole said. She kept this same attitude constant through all the rejection, and nothing changed for Tour Team. “I said I was not giving up, I refuse to give up,” Cole said.
“I was going to be a tour guide whether they liked it or not,”
Cole said.
Cole emailed LeAnn Stroupe, manager of the Office of Visitor Relations, to ask what she could do to improve.
Stroupe met with Cole outside her office one day after work, and they talked for hours. “I was able to kind of talk to her about what I saw in the interview,” Stroupe said. “And when I brought it to her attention, she was very aware that she had those character flaws that prevented her from being the person I see her now to be.”
Throughout her life, Cole struggled with her self-confidence, and the conversation she had with LeAnn allowed her to address them. “We had such an open conversation about my insecurities and why she didn’t want to hire me and why I was feeling that way,” Cole said.
shley Cole got ready for class much earlier than usual on a rainy morning in November of 2013. She tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep, waiting on a phone call from the University of Missouri’s Office of Visitor Relations.
Cole applied to be a part of Mizzou’s Tour Team, a group of students who give tours to Mizzou’s visitors, a total of three times during her time at Mizzou. First, she applied in the spring of 2013, again in the fall of 2014, and then was accepted on her third try in the spring of 2014. Despite not obtaining the position the first time around, Cole remained confident going into her second try because she felt like “(she) had grown since the last time (she) applied.”
At the time, Cole was a junior living in her sorority house. Kat Birkenbeul, another girl in her new member class, applied to Tour Team that same year.
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“When I woke up, she was gone,” Cole said. “And that’s how I found out I didn’t get (the position).”
Even before applying to Tour Team, Cole knew rejection well. “For me, at Mizzou, I’ve been not accepted to a lot of things,” Cole said. “It’s always taken me multiple times to get accepted to things.”
Though not a stranger to being turned away, Cole took this one pretty hard. “I kind of went into a self-loathing pattern,” Cole said.
“I talked down to myself and said, ‘Why don’t you just give up applying for things at Mizzou? There’s a reason why people keep rejecting you from things.’”
"FOR ME, AT MIZZOU,I'VE BEEN NOT ACCEPTED TO A LOT OF THINGS."
Ashley Cole works the desk at Reynolds Alumni Center for Mizzou's Office of Visitor Relations. Though denied three times before being accepted to work as a Tour Guide for Mizzou's Tour Team, Cole now holds a position as a Team Leader. (photo: Kathryn Cua)
"I WAS GOING TO BE A TOUR GUIDE WHETHER THEY LIKED IT OR NOT."
Tour Team's new hire class of 2014 jumps for the camera on the David R. Francis Quadrangle. Though many apply as freshmen, some juniors still apply as well. (photo provided by Ashley Cole).
“I don’t credit LeAnn for it, but she kind of opened my eyes to me having confidence issues, and now I’m able to look at myself in a different light,” Cole said. “Now I know why it’s not acceptable to see yourself like that.”
When the opportunity arose to apply again to Tour Team in the spring of 2014, a more confident Cole tried once more.
And this time, she got it.
“When I finally made Tour Team after my third time applying, I was ecstatic, I was so happy. I remember running to the quad and crying,” Cole said.
“I know of no one of that particular class that appreciated it as much as Ashley did, and again who had put so much into it,” Stroupe said.
Though it took her three times until she got the job, Cole said she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Had she got it the first or second time around, she said, “she wouldn’t have appreciated it as much as she did” having gotten the job on her third try.
“I believe that if you want something and you keep fighting for it, you’re going to get there eventually,” Cole said. “It may not be exactly how you imagined it, but you’ll get what you want eventually.”