Trip Recap
Professor Mike Yawn

I think the students all had a great time. We traveled through nine states, saw five presidential homes, four state capitol buildings, and saw the Martin Luther King grave site, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Montgomery Civil Rights Memorial, the Confederate White House, and the Confederate Capitol Building. These four students, all of whom are very bright, learned more on this trip than most students learn in a whole semester.

I learned a lot, too. Students are stereotyped and, often, it’s justified. But it was gratifying to see these students interested in American history, sacrificing their income, their school, and their sleep to see an important part of that history. For the first eighty-eight hours of the trip, Megan Bryant, the President of the Political Science Junior Fellows, slept approximately eight hours. She was a wonderful navigator, working our GPS, initiating games to keep people occupied, and maintaining a positive environment. To see the inauguration, the students drove some twenty hours on Monday, the day before the inauguration, and then stayed up all night to plan their inaugural route. When they met obstacles en route to their ticket gate, the students slogged ahead. They walked at least five miles on the day of the inauguration, and they ran the last mile to get to their ticket gate on time. When they were turned away, they found the next best spot and enjoyed their distant vantage point.

It’s an honor to work with such good students.

For the record, the students voted on their favorite sites on the trip. Here they are:
Group Recap

1. Favorite Capitol Building: The general consensus was that the Montgomery, Alabama capitol building was the most impressive. Its history, size, and the impressive surrounding structures all enhance its impact. Generally speaking, the Baton Rouge or the Atlanta capitol buildings were regarded as the least impressive.

2. Favorite Presidential Homes: There was a tie for “most impressive” between Mount Vernon and Monticello. Monroe’s Ashlawn-Highland was regarded as the least impressive by all but Megan Bryant, but everyone was impressed with it, too.

3. Pleasant Surprise: The large numbers of pleasant surprises the students mentioned is a good indicator of the success of the trip. Three of the students mentioned Staunton, VA, where the Woodrow Wilson home is located. Other students mentioned the (1) beautiful Virginia countryside, (2) happening upon two unplanned presidential homes, and (3) the snow. One student had never seen snow.

4. Things Learned: Each student took away something different from the trip. One student learned more about Huey Long; another about Jefferson Davis and the confederacy; still another about the process of rustification used at Mount Vernon; and others mentioned the relationship between Monroe and Jefferson.