Picture that guy who lived on the second floor of Pennypacker--the savior who typed your 10-page Expos papers and helped you with marginal utility curves and the trickle-down effect.

Or how about the coordinator of some Phillips Brooks House program who pleaded with you to continue volunteering because they desperately needed tutors even after you didn't show up at the second meeting.

Remember the girl from Lesley College who cycled 4500 miles across the country with you the summer of '84?

Picture exhanging gold bands with him or her. Picture a diamond. Picture forever.

The search is over and you still have to write a thesis next year.

Soon to be Married

Some Harvard undergraduates wondered whether they should even send a Hallmark greeting today to that special girlfriend, boyfriend, or simply "friend." Should you go for mailed personals or an even more personal approach? Maybe leave a dozen roses or a huge Hershey's kiss anonymously outside her door in commemoration of St. Valentine, a Roman priest martyred as a Christian in 3 A.D.

But other couples in love do not engage in such flirtatious banter. That's because these college students are already engaged. At Harvard. Literally, the soon-to-be-married way.

Their Valentine's gifts are not anonymous; they are not mysterious. They are anticipated, expected. These undergraduates are devoted and attached. Unlike the medieval European tradition where young men drew the names of women from a sealed box and were paired up only for one day in celebration of an ancient Roman feast, these couples are intending to be paired. For life.

Many engaged couples believe it was fate that brought them together. "Destino siempre gana," Victoria Rivera '87 says of her relationship with Remigio Cruz '86.

He agrees. "I saw her as I daydreamed. She's just that kind of girl. We both complement each other. I'm what she's been looking for, and she's what I was looking for," says Cruz.

It was definitely fate that Joseph F. McLean '86 met Elizabeth Belliveau of Lesley College, according to him. "She lived in Manchester, N.H. I went to St. Paul's [high school] from 79-'82...so during the school year I was forty miles from her home...and in the summers I worked there. She went to Lesley [close to Harvard]. But only our mutual interest in the [Ride-for-Life] brought us together."

Most engaged couples at Harvard say they first met in the hallways of dormitories, in classes, in the basement of Memorial Hall, in extracurricular organizational meetings, in mutual friends' suites.

"We first met in September," says Christina M. Rafinski '88, recalling her original encounter with her fiance, John M. Heyde '88. "We first knew each other as friends. [As the semester progressed] I realized I couldn't type at all. He volunteered to type my papers. I took him out for Chinese food to thank him...," Rafinski says.

"We were also both taking Ec 10," the Leverett House resident remembers. "He was going to be an Ec Major, and I needed help on problem sets."