But Limberakis does see a problem. "It is a lot more tempting to just go home if the food really stinks. That isn't so good. I think you've got to learn how to be totally alone."

Jonathan H. Mark '86, Jessica's brother, points out another disadvantage to staying in Cambridge. "You don't have the experience of starting from square one in some new place--in a way you're kind of deprived," he says.

"But," Mark adds, "it's sort of worth it also to have intimate knowledge of the place, and to really feel at home somewhere."

Limberakis agrees. "I'm sure I use Cambridge differently, because I know little spots that no one would really know who didn't live here."

Matthew A. Berlin '89 says that students who grew up in Cambridge not only use the city differently, but see it as most Harvard students can't.

"Cambridge itself is a remarkable place," Berlin says. "The variety of life that you find here is something that most Harvard students don't know anything about. Cambridge has this particular quality to it that Harvard is just one aspect of."

"It's very hard, I think, for a student going here, inundated with work and other students, to see that," Berlin says. "To be able to see the University from the street really gives a totally different perspective."

How did these Cantabrigians perceive Harvard before they became students themselves? Their impressions of the University and the students seem to be as varied as impressions formed anywhere else.

"I went to public high school," says Hannah Gittleman '87, "and Harvard students were always kind of a joke guess it was basically because the ones we noticed were the ones that stuck out the most--the ones who got drunk and ran through Harvard Square singing loudly and being obnoxious. We definitely had a bad image of Harvard students."

Jonathan Mark had a different experience. "I guess I kind of looked up to Harvard students before I got here," he says. "I'd walk through the Science Center on my way to high school, and I'd be there as an outsider while there'd be all these people doing real things, being there for some actual reason. Of course," he adds, "I had no idea what they actually did."