For Rawlins, Two Lunches And Coffee Is Business as Usual

She doesn't rely on it that often. Well, infrequently-in moments of weakness. OK, it's sort of a habit. Maybe even an addiction.

Lamelle D. Rawlins '99 loves her planner, and with good reason. It's no coincidence that she and former campus politico Avery W. Gardiner '97 share the same taste in schedule books, nor is it odd that Lamelle-who's worked enough crowds to let her first name stand alone-has chosen a planner with an open space for daily notes that shifts to the next day if items are not checked off or properly put to rest.

For Lamelle Rawlins, the day truly never ends.

Her "Quo Vadis" brand septanote (seven day) wonder is a black vinyl number that she whips out at any opportunity-whether jotting election battle plans or setting a civilian lunch date. "Quo Vadis" claims a pedigree dating back to 1954 and sports the suspect warning that "Quo Vadis diaries are addictive."

"To some extent it is addictive, but it's a good addiction," says Lamelle, adding that she often "proselytizes" to other students, praising the advantages of the septanote system for organizing the chaos of her campus life.

Like many planners, the book opens to reveal a set of seven narrow columns where a lucky few get their appointments carefully inscribed in Lamelle's narrow, sloping script.

Although she will say she is "always late," a mortal sin in what the ever-politically correct campus politician terms Harvard's "culture of appointments," it is through no scheduling fault of her own. For though Lamelle may insist that everyone on campus "finds their niche and digs in deep," none, it seems, has reached the depth and breadth of immersion as the first-ever female Undergraduate Council president.

So, what does your planner say you have to do today?

Most students, like Lamelle, cultivate a slavish dependence on their neatly parceled timetables-whether Vinyl metal spirals from the bargain bin at CVS or leather-bound volumes printed in acid-free ink and stored in the glass cases at Bob Slate's. Worshipped like prayer books and handled like the latest edition of Playboy to hit the men's locker room, complex planners are as common among students as red books in Mao's China.

Forget organized. In the battle to remain up-to-date and flawlessly on time, only the paranoid survive.

"I don't like to waste time," says Lamelle, the usual vein of easy laughter going out of her voice as she rattles off her daily list of chores-ranging from committee meetings to average meal dates of breakfast, two lunches and coffee (all of which, she notes, are "business related").

"It's a way of life for me," the seasoned campaigner concludes, noting that her tendency to multitask "is actually a timesaver."

Although she prioritizes change on campus, Lamelle refuses to challenge her own traditional planning methods with a computerized version of her darling septanote. Everyone from Council Vice President Mark Price to her own father back in Illinois may pocket computerized planners, but Lamelle-like the vast majority of students-remains skeptical of the new technology, preferring the tangible immediacy of string-around-the-finger reminders.

"Palm Pilot" digital planners package everything from Tokyo time to Bobby Fisher's chess strategies in an efficient bundle of computer chips the size of your average remote control. Much like the coveted television accessory, however, the rare compu-planners have become sour status symbols, as misunderstood as the channel changer left for dead in a garbage can when its batteries run low.

"I just like paper. There's something very therapeutic about writing things down," Lamelle says. "I really believe in getting the details down and not letting them just clutter my mind. My goal is to just have a clear head."

If only it was possible to creep back in time, back to the elementary days when spiral stacks of rainbow tinted paper and Transformer Trapper Keepers were all you needed to appear self-assured.

For Lamelle, planner time-travel is a snap-she keeps a collection not only of old planners but also journals.

"I find it's useful to look back and see where I've come from, because I know I will be a completely different person by the end of the semester," she says. "It's a really interesting journey."

There's a reason marketing geniuses long ago termed them "diaries"-beyond the daily block of hourly entries, of section meetings, meals, errands and miscellaneous thankless tasks, a year unfolds as effortlessly as pages turned by the wind.

For Lamelle, the wind seems to be whispering election, but septanote pages for December are, unfortunately, mum.

"For now I'm perfectly happy," says the political powerhouse, with a satisfied tone that barely betrays the chaos of appointments she has so carefully arranged like David Copperfield's indestructible house of cards. From the Council podium to administrative lunches and back to dinner in Adams house, Lamelle and her septanote have got it covered.

So, what do you have to do today?