The house system is one of the coolest non-academic things about Caltech (by popular opinion, at least), but I do not live in one of them. I live in an apartment off-campus, and have been since the beginning of the summer. Last year, I lived in Caltech off-campus housing, and I realized that it was a huge improvement over living in a dorm. When it came time to find housing for this school year, I realized I didn’t want to be locked into the Caltech housing system, especially since there was a good chance I’d be in one of the non-“house” dorms. After a frustrating and then suddenly-successful apartment hunt, I found an option that was pretty much ideal. Now I live, in common tech parlance, off-off (campus), which indicates that I live neither in a dorm nor in Caltech-owned off-campus housing.