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Tokorozawa Campus Tour Guide
Junna Mori, 2nd year doctoral student​ ​at the Graduate School of Sport Sciences​

At Tokorozawa Campus

While studying on campus, students participate in activities and work that contribute to improving the value of the university. What kind of students are involved in "student participation/student jobs," which play such an important role at universities, and how are they involved? This time, we will introduce the daily life of Junna Mori, a second-year doctoral student at the Graduate School of Sport Sciences, who works as a Tokorozawa Campus tour guide.

Q. How did you get started?

At Tokorozawa Campus, the Cooperative Association (hereafter referred to as the Co-op) runs campus tours, and I was invited by a Co-op employee. Tokorozawa Campus is rich in nature compared to other Waseda campuses and has many facilities equipped with large equipment and tools used for research. Although the location is somewhat inconvenient compared to the other campuses, I am working hard to convey the charm of Tokorozawa Campus as much as possible.

Q. What kind of activities do you do?

I act as a tour guide, showing the campus and introducing each faculty to high school students and their guardians who are hoping to enroll in the School of Sport Sciences and the School of Human Sciences. The tour lasts about an hour and takes you around the campus, introducing the classrooms used for classes, as well as the cafeteria, gymnasium, and the Athlete Support Center Faculty of Sport Sciences. Some participants who come from far away also want to know about student life, so I sometimes talk about how students at Tokorozawa Campus spend their time.

Tokorozawa Campus tour guide showing the cafeteria (left). The campus tour also takes you to facilities unique to Tokorozawa Campus, such as Building No. 101 (right), which houses the psychology and welfare laboratories and the Athlete Support Center.

Q. Please tell us what you felt through the activities.

I tend to be shy and not good at talking to people I meet for the first time. However, as a tour guide, the route around the campus and the topics I will talk about are often more or less set, so even someone like me who is not good at talking can do it without worrying. Also, the number of participants in each tour is small (around 20 at most), so I can speak without being too timid. Furthermore, I feel that the more experience I gain as a tour guide, the more variety of topics I can talk about, such as the current state of student life at Tokorozawa Campus, has increased.

Q. How do you balance multiple commitments, such as your studies and a student job?

Compiling a research report

At Tokorozawa Campus, campus tours are held about twice a month, usually on Saturdays. Guides are recruited by the Co-op on a monthly basis, so it is easy to participate as they can coordinate with the students’ research lab schedules and their teaching assistants (TAs) schedule, if applicable. The time spent guiding a tour is about two hours, including the time for advance preparation and Q&A after the tour, so it is easy to balance it with your own schedule.

Q. Please tell us about your future aspirations and the challenges you plan to take on.

First of all, I would like to devote myself to research on the energy metabolism of female athletes in order to complete my doctoral course, and after graduating, I would like to be affiliated with an institution such as a university or research institute in order to continue my research. I believe that communication skills are necessary when presenting research at academic conferences and other events, so I would like to use my experience as a tour guide to convey my studies and life at university to people outside the university as a foundation and strive to make use of it in my future research presentations.

How I spend my week when classes are in session