"I like living in a house and going to work, its nice not to live in the midst [of classes]," Carter says.

"I feel more like an adult," she says.

Baking Bread

"It's a house that's really a house," DeSombre says.

And just like at home, there are chores to complete.

All co-opers take turns preparing meals for fellow residents and cleaning the building.

These chores, which also include scrubbing bathrooms and washing floors, are divided among the residents according to a two-week point system.

"The co-opers are the only Harvard students who clean their own rooms," says DeSombre proudly. "At dinner everyone sits at the table and has a home-cooked meal, you know everybody, you talk."

"It definitely is nice cooking your own food," Innes says. "It brings everybody together."

Both Dudley and Jordan co-opers order food, mostly vegetarian, from a wholesaler. Twice a week, the aroma of freshly baked bread and granola wafts through their buildings.

Jordan co-op's Head Tutor Leo Cabranes-Grant says baking bread and granola is a evidence of self-sufficiency as well as a political statement.

"The political implication is that we don't get everything through commercial means," Leo says. "It also shows our control over the quality of our products."

It's also a taste of real life, Horgan says. "Eventually in your life you'll have to cook," he says. "You have to clean up after yourself and are responsible."

Financial Bonus

An added incentive to living in the co-ops is that both room and board is considerably less expensive.