For those of us who already live off campus, this housing guide may not be very helpful.

Sure, it’s got information about what to do if you don’t have a roommate, if you have noisy neighbors and when to start your housing search, but how useful is that when some of us are graduating and leaving Bowling Green for good (sorry, I couldn’t resist – can’t you tell I’m a little excited?)

And while we may not be looking for a house or apartment this year, we are still, dare I say, needed.

There is something that we as upperclassmen should be aware of during this important time in an off-campus housing searchers life. The all important tour.

Students go on foot, by car and by bus to the different houses around Bowling Green that they are hoping to live in next year.

Armed with a sheet of paper from local real-estate agents, their future roommates and a smile, these newbies to the world of renting walk up the stairs and into current renters lives.

Already this year, 20 different students have knocked on our door (since we lack a doorbell) asking if they can walk through our house, which, granted, is usually in shambles.

With a half-hearted smile, we show them everything that the house we affectionately call “111” has to offer.

We tell them about how much we pay for gas and utilities, how long it takes to walk to campus from the house, and naturally, that only having to walk a few blocks back from the bars has major advantages.

Letting random strangers walk through your house unannounced and uninvited can be stressful. In one instance this past week, a girl brought her parents to come through our house on a Saturday morning.

Granted we had meet this girl before (she had previously looked through the house with her two roommates), but we definitely were not ready for parents to be perusing through our home.

There were food wrappers on the floor, beer cans on the table, not to mention I was taking a glorious nap on the couch when our “guests” arrived a little after noon.

We could have looked out the peep hole and decided not to let them in. But then we wouldn’t be fufilling our duty as a fellow Falcon to this young lady and her parents.

So we let them in. Explained the mess, and walked them out. Luckily I do not think they were very concerned with our way of living, and were more enthralled with the beauty of our house’s woodwork.

They didn’t ask to see the upstairs this time, as if they had thought they had taken up enough of our time. They thanked us over and over as they walked out the door, assuring us that we need not apologize for the condition of our living room, and that we seemed like very nice girls.

The reason it is so important to give people the chance to take a tour of a residence is simply because one time, we were there, too.

Last year, as we set out on our housing search adventure, several people turned us down for tours. Some of them just didn’t bother to answer the door, while others had to run “errands” or go to “class.”

However, the gentlemen that previously rented the house that we decided to move into were kind enough to not only let us walk through, but one of them even offered us cookies (whether or not milk was part of the equation was a question I did not ask).

It was because of those boys that my roommates and I have come to accept our responsibility to show the youngsters the way of the off-campus world.

To let them know that our walls may be paper-thin, that our carpet is definitely not the color it is supposed to be and that one of my roommates thinks that we have a ghost in our kitchen.

But we wouldn’t want it any other way.