I remember reading in his proposal for Williams-at-Home II talking about the failures: that in Williams-at-Home, the “Williams” represents the academic, the intellectual, the academy and taking notes, taking an issue and looking at the different perspectives. “At Home” is being out in the personal world. So there’s the “Williams,” which is the public, academic world within the personal world. Then he said it is the rare student who can feel comfortable in both. He said that usually students are, if they take their “Williams,” how they behave in a classroom and they’re comfortable there, they are not going to be as comfortable in an “at Home” experience. They are going to be a little bit awkward with their host families or, like me, there will be students of Williams-at-Home that will be more comfortable in the “at Home” part, being out of the classroom and, “Isn’t this great, we’re with real people.” And the difficulty with them is to be able to teach them to think critically or analytically about what they’re experiencing in the “at Home.” And he said that was a failure of Williams-at-Home I.

John Neikirk '73