Around the Dudley House Co-op and Center for High Energy Metaphysics, 2011

 The Dudley House Co-op is the only co-op affiliated with Harvard. It's an intentional community of 32 undergraduates and two graduate tutors living in two Victorian mansions near Porter Square. We all had to do about 6 hours of work a week of chores, or 32 points (co-opers with stewardships, like those in charge of our bulk food orders or recycling, had reductions in chores). Each chore had a point value assigned, based on how difficult, time-consuming, or undesirable the task was, though a point tended to correspond to about 15 minutes of work. A fun job like Cook's Assistant (making salad and bread) was 4 points, though it often took more than two hours. Cleaning a large bathroom might be 7 points, though it would take less than an hour. My favorite jobs were bread (7 points to make 6-8 loaves of bread from scratch) and dishes (4 points to spend a half hour enveloped in clouds of steam and biodegradable dishsoap). 

Like many co-op dwellers, the Dudley co-op residents were deeply interested in radical politics and alternatives to capitalism. I learned more there about being a responsible person than I learned in college.

 After these first challahs cracked, I learned to let the bread rise enough. You can tell it's ready when you poke it with a finger and it BARELY springs back.

Ashley's beautiful bread, which spent the second rise in baskets

The co-op is also the only Harvard-affiliated housing that allows pets.