Pen Ultimate

Choosing what to write with is a momentous decision for me. It all began with one of those shiny Hello Kitty vinyl school kits, you know, the bright ones with a neat little row of plastic loops inside to harbor a child's collection of those disappearing markers that come inside boxes of Lucky Charms. In those inviting slots she had tucked a fascinating armament of pens and mechanical pencils and ever since then I've been a writing utensil snob. I revel in the satisfaction of taking notes in just the right color ink and with a pen of exactly the right weight. Not just any pen will do for any occasion.

I don't think I'm alone. Harvard students can be classified into distinct categories according to their instrument of choice: there are ball-point gnawers, the roller-ball elite and, somewhat rarer, the pencil people. These types are not mutually exclusive, but they certainly divide the campus into a class structure of note-taking. The felt-tip bullies, a rare exception, force their way onto a sheet with the power of fat letters. As for the multi-colored clicker pen owners, well, they are just confused pre-meds.

A pen-count in my last week's English 178x section yielded the following results: four ball-pointers, seven roller-ball-users and a lone pencil person. Hmmm. Is the roller-ball phenomenon a throwback from days of fountain pen prevalence? Perhaps proud owners cherish their Pilot Precises and their UniBall Deluxes for their decisive, permanent ink or for the little windows through which they can watch the ink go down and think, "boy, I sure write a lot!" The Harvard humanities notetaker comes to adore the flowing pages upon pages of intellectual-looking lecture notes.

Ball-points, though less bold, have their own lore. They always work well in structured environments full of forms and charts and whatnot; they reek of office work and documentation. Have you ever seen a salesperson at Macy's fill in a tri-copy receipt with anything but a ball-point, sometimes engraved with the manager's son's little league team slogan, squeezed between well-manicured fingernails? In German class, I saw the ball-point ratio skyrocket. Even the Europeans, whom I had always romanticized as the last bastion of the noble fountain-pen glory, were filling in blanks on vocabulary sheets with the sliding ink of Bic pens--the kind you can buy in 20-packs at CVS. These plastic wonders are a good ol' standby, always there to jot down messages for your roommate on a Post-it or, more importantly, for you to chew on. What a perfect companion a blueberry-colored, Paper Mate makes when you sit on the third floor of Hilles, worrying about tomorrow's exa!.

What about pencils? Who still uses them? They can't write in blue, or black. They can't look decisive or bold. They remind us of high school math class. Ahh, but here's the one, obvious beauty of a pencil: graphite disappears with a little help from that wonder of physics, friction. Pencils at Harvard are reserved for either those who aren't vain enough to care about permanence or for taking exams, where we would rather not have our confused hieroglyphics remembered. Pencil use has its hierarchy, though: note the dichotomy between integral-calculators, who use mechanical pencils, and the doodler who doesn't notice how terminally dull his or her Dixon Ticonderoga #2 has gotten.

Who knows what effect writing utensils have on your prose? Do you was creative with your Mont Blanc? Does a Bic make you ditzy? Do you only write in pencil when you draw on the Lamont classroom desks? Choosing the right weapon might be the most important academic decision you make in college, so take heed. Social theorists and psychology concentrators, pay attention. There's a thesis out there waiting to be written.