(In which I arrive for my final year, write a silly play, start to settle in, and find an omen of good luck.)

Hello, reader, and welcome... to the fourth and final installment in Collin Hazlett's Exploits and Misadventures at Carleton College.

That isn't really the name of this blog. It's really Collin Hazlett's Blog, a fine title, if a little lacking in stylistic flair.

If you are a new reader, I should introduce myself! I'm a senior math major here at Carleton. I suppose that by now I have gotten used to being a math major, but I am definitely not used to being a senior. In my mind, "seniors" are still the class of '09 - the people who were seniors when I was a freshman.  I can't be that old.

This blog is mostly a record of:

• Fun things I do at Carleton
• Academic things I do at Carleton (some of which also fall into the above category)
• Mathematical curiosities that I think about or talk about with my friends
• Short plays that I write
• Facts about turtles

The turtle facts are something I throw in to keep my readers from getting bored, or occasionally when I can't think of anything else to write. Sometimes I just slip them surreptitiously into the middle of paragraphs. It is illegal in the United States to sell a turtle which is under four inches long. Usually, though, I announce them beforehand.

Anyway, I am looking forward to this fall, especially since it means I get to do all the Carleton fall things I didn't do last year because I was having mathematical adventures in Hungary. I missed the Halloween Concert, the apple picking expedition, "Set Up" Your Roommate, feeling the temperature suddenly plummet to lung-petrifying depths, and so many other time-honored fall traditions that we have here. I'm looking forward to doing them all again, one last time.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is writing more plays for Chelsea 11:17. For newcomers, I should explain that this is a theater event which meets every other Friday in Little Nourse Theater at 11:17 PM. The audience members bring freshly typed short scripts. The scripts are shuffled and distributed to people at random, and the plays are performed one after another, on the spot. The subjects that the plays treat are usually very silly, very strange, or both.

Here's the one I wrote for last Friday's Chelsea 11:17. It's not my best work, but it might be held up as a typical example of the kind of oddity that regularly graces the stage at Chelsea.

This time I was the only senior at Chelsea. I guess I'm actually technically one of the seniors in charge of Chelsea, although I really have no special powers or responsibilities because of that... or, if I do, I neglect them.  But this time all the other seniors-in-charge had gone to see a late-night showing of the famously terrible movie The Room, and left Little Nourse Theater locked.

When little Nourse is unavailable, the back-up location for Chelsea 11:17 is Nourse Main Lounge, a large and comfortable couch-laden room with a fireplace. I walked in and discovered that the lights were off. At first I assumed there was nobody there, but, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that there were actually many, many freshmen hiding behind couches and under tables, in the dark.  They had all come to see Chelsea 11:17, and they were hiding in the dark because... they felt like it, I guess.

I almost turned on the lights, but they begged me to leave them off and come pick a hiding spot, so I crawled under a little table and hid with them. 

These are EXACTLY the kind of people we need at Chelsea 11:17. I am so happy about our bumper crop of amazing freshmen.

Not only did they turn out to be good actors, but they were also happily willing to put up with the bizarre skits they were asked to perform (like mine, for example).

I did end up opening Little Nourse Theater so we could perform in there. I don't have the key, but there are ways of getting into the theater without the key, for those who know what's what. I'm not one of those who know what's what, but I managed to open the theater anyway.

On an unrelated subject, my classes this term are: Creating Symmetry (Math), Data Structures (Computer Science), and Intro to Syntax (Linguistics). The letters in the word "turtle" can be arranged in 360 ways.

On another unrelated subject, I still need to go reverse-traying. This was an idea I had, and blogged about, based on the beloved college activity of traying. For the uninitiated, "traying" is the act of sledding down a snowy hill on a cafeteria tray. Reverse-traying, naturally, is the act of eating cafeteria food off of a sled. I will need to wait for winter to do this. But in the meantime, some friends and I have come up with the idea of "reverse-streaking," which involves running around in a public place wearing ALL the clothes you can possibly fit on yourself.

Yes, this is going to be an excellent final year.

And, as a special bonus, on the day I arrived here, I found a small scrap of paper in front of Sayles. It must have been part of a New Student Week activity. On one side, it says:

The reverse side is:

Yes, this year started with a Turtle Fact. A clearer omen of good luck cannot be imagined.

Thanks for tuning in, dear reader!