Thursday and Friday were Reading Days at Carleton. I love reading days. You never know quite what’s going to happen.

On the last day of classes (Wednesday), students decked out our observatory like R2-D2, complete with recorded sound effects. It was kind of fun to wake up the next morning to Minnesota Public Radio’s Cathy Wurzer talking about the prank during Morning Edition.

Then the whole campus seems to have taken a breath on Thursday.

Then on Friday they decided to reprise the Silent Dance Party in the Libe (as seen in this amateur documentary).

But there was a lot of Friday yet to fill, and nobody really wanted to study any more, so breaking a Guinness World Record seemed the thing to do. Before yesterday, only a measly 432 people had ever participated in mass spooning. Thankfully, that pathetic record has now been shattered. 529 students saw to that. (Which, by the way, is more than a quarter of the student body… er… population.)

I didn’t get to see R2-D2 in action (he was dismantled disappointingly quickly). I did, however, wonder what all those people were doing lying down in the Bald Spot yesterday as I walked to the student union to get coffee. And then I forgot to wonder about the people lying down when everyone’s attention was diverted by the streakers.

While all of that was happening, the investment team that manages our endowment was receiving an award for the way they handled things recently.

So yeah, busy times here this week. But today, everything’s much more serious as finals get underway. The library is full of people studying and people getting ready to say goodbye and people saying goodbye. The end of Spring Term is always bittersweet.