In most Discovery Externship experiences, you will be living in a homestay with a "K" alum. The Homestay provides the student and the alum "porch time"- a time to connect outside of the normal work environment. You can take advantage of this one-on-one time by asking your Discovery Externship alumni sponsor a host of questions about career-related issues or perhaps about how they balance their professional and personal lives.

The Homestay is often where the "real connection" happens between you and the alumni sponsor and is an integral part of the Discovery Externship program.

If a particular externship does not have a homestay sponsor, the Center, along with the student, will make every effort to identify the safest, most affordable housing arrangements possible for the duration of the externship (e.g. hostel, university housing, etc.).

If the homestay is not available and the extern secures housing other than what is arranged by the Center, the extern will be responsible for the costs associated with that living arrangement.

When the Discovery model was conceived, there was a major logistics problem. Discovery was designed as a short-term summer program that would fit well for rising juniors between “K’s” late finish in June and study abroad departures that began as early as July (two-thirds of all long-term programs depart prior to Labor Day). But since it was a short-term experience, apartment sublets weren’t possible, hotel costs were too high, the U.S. is horrible on the hostel front, and residence halls at colleges and universities wouldn’t book short-term stays either. So we were left with a problem – where would externs sleep? We took a deep breath and called our alumni site sponsors back, asking if they would take externs into their homes as well as into their workplaces. To our surprise, most of them said, “Yes.” This created Discovery’s emphasis on homestays (two-thirds of all externships include one), and it gave rise to a phenomenon we neither designed nor anticipated – Porch Time.

Porch Time is an evening walk. It’s a morning commute. It’s a weekend tour. It’s a dinner table conversation. And because it’s in the summer, it’s discussions on decks, patios, and porches. Porch time is where sponsors and externs talk about the workday they just shared. They talk about life at “K.” They discuss family, neighborhoods, and communities of all kinds. They talk about politics, social change, films, food, and more. And some even talk about work as part of a bigger life.

Just as work is a slice of the Discovery Externship that begs for the curiosity and questions of externs, Porch Time might give rise to even more questions. The work site may be what you list on your next resume, but you may just find it’s the Porch Time through which you learned the most.