Scholarly Style

Alex M. Ohanian ’05 is obsessed.

She confesses to going on $50-plus notebook-buying binges at Cross and Staples twice each semester, at the beginning of the year and before finals.

“If you think about the amount of time you spend with a notebook,” she says, “it’s definitely an investment.”

She’s one of a minority of students who breaks out of the battered Mead spiral-bound mold, opting for a prettier and pricier alternative. Designer labels aren’t just for the back pockets of jeans. Posh names like Coach and Louis Vuitton sell leather planners, and The Coop offers illustrated—and more affordable— Jordi Labanda notebooks.

For a scholar like Ohanian, who handwrites everything from her day’s schedule to essays before committing them to computer, paper matters. She has lime green notebooks with neon-lined paper in her room, an homage to pink and Spanish flamenco dancers. The books themselves are made in Spain, and at some specialty stores can cost up to $10.

Then there are the notebook purists who scoff at pricey paper, like Virginia A. Fisher ’08. Fisher converted to yellow legal pads in high school after finding some in her house. “Once I started, I really liked it,” says the vintage-garbed redhead as she browses the aisles of Bob Slate on a late afternoon. Her simplicity pays off—when her TF is handing back problem sets, she can pick hers out of the pile fast.

Lewis Z. Liu ’08 is another notebook fanatic. Liu has notebooks for everything: a green Ampad for his math scratchwork (only the spiralbound kind), another for his Math 23 notes, two red Ampads for Physics 16, an unlined book for art, a battered poetry spiralbound, a clipboard with loose-leaf for penning his problem sets.

“I’ve never done this in high school,” says the physics student. Now, he says, everything from p-sets to scratchwork must be “a work of art.”

Sitting in his Pennypacker suite, Liu dreams of the future of his Math 23 notes—some of which are taped to his wall already, decorated with blue ink and green highlighter.

“Wallpaper,” he says, drifting into a vision of a home plastered with loose-leaf.