The program places you in shared flats with people you have not met. Mine is two Kenyon students, one from a partner college, and a local student doing her honours year.
The flat is good: high ceilings, terrible water pressure, a view of the mountain if you lean. What I did not anticipate is how much of living together is negotiating infrastructure.
The kettle problem
There is one kettle, four people who want tea at the same hour, and a power arrangement that objects when the kettle and the heater run together. We have a rota now. I am aware of how that sounds.
Every shared flat runs on one unwritten agreement that nobody can articulate until somebody breaks it.
Honestly the rota has been fine. The harder adjustment was learning that my housemate's honours deadlines are not negotiable around our weekend plans.