How about living at a historic museum and seeing masts of tall ships outside your window? Welcome to your home for the semester.

Between four and seven students live in each of five historic houses adjacent to Mystic Seaport and the Mystic River. These nineteenth-century homes, where shipbuilders, mill workers and fishermen once lived, are now equipped with high-speed internet connections, microwaves and the furnishings and comforts of a modern home. Students who have been living in dormitory rooms and eating in dining halls enjoy the freedom and fun of cooperative living. Williams-Mystic staff members are house advisors.

You'll often invite your professors and members of the Museum staff to your houses for lunch and host social events on the weekends (how about a BBQ cook-off or a kayak trip to Fisher's Island). The atmosphere is warm and casual, yet intellectually invigorating as you live and study with students from many different colleges. An American studies major from Tufts may be the roommate of a music major from Oberlin; an English major from Amherst may live with a biology major from Swarthmore; a Chinese major from Wellesley may share a house with an engineering major from Dartmouth. The combinations allow unlimited opportunities for you to gain new perspectives.

Just as members of a ship's crew develop an extraordinary bond through shared experience, commitment to a common goal and mutual trust, the small group of students is melded together by the dynamics of Williams-Mystic. Students prepare family-style dinners together and share in all of the responsibilities of daily life. Each house receives a grocery check every few weeks that covers the costs of provisions. We do our best to consider every detail when placing students in their homes. For example, vegetarians often live together, early-risers may share a house and night owls may share another.

By the end of the semester, you might just end up a better cook and you'll come back to visit "your" house at Alumni Weekend each fall, thinking of all the fun memories you shared there.