Week 18: Construction

Every few months, a different part of this godforsaken campus transforms into a war zone of hard hats and bulldozers as they break ground on a new "improvement." The problem with these improvements is that they take years to complete, and they're a major inconvenience in the meantime. How much of an inconvenience? Imagine that you have a really nice house with a front door, a back door, and a really, really inconvenient door in the basement that you never ever use. Now imagine that somebody takes a bunch of backhoes and bulldozers and digs giant 30-foot pits in front of the front and back doors and then puts giant signs up that say "haha fuck you man" in front of your house, so you have to use the inconvenient door. Yeah that's pretty much what's happening in front of our library right now. Here's why construction sucks:

It takes forever: The construction never ends. The school is all about continuous improvement, which is fine I guess, but we'll never get to reap the benefits while we're here. I'm sure that the new student health center will look great when I come back to visit in 10 years, but walking around the construction every day until I graduate is going to be a real pain in the ass. Plus, I visit the health center just as much as anybody (vertigo episodes, hearing loss, back pain, countless prescriptions, the list goes on) and it doesn't need any improvement. You know what needs improvement? The shitty dorm I lived in freshman year. The horrible food. The class registration system. You know what none of those require? Massive construction projects that take forever and get in everybody's way.

This is where I lived freshman year. It was a shithole

It's loud: The other day I was in the library. If you're not familiar with libraries, they're places you can go to study because, generally, they're quiet. I was sitting there working on something important, like that day's clever tweet, when all of a sudden the entire building erupted in a loud grinding noise. I'm not sure if they were digging a new basement or blowing off the roof, but needless to say this noise was not conducive to studying. Construction, by nature, is super loud and obnoxious. If it's outside, it's not great but it could be worse. If it's inside, it'll sound like John Cena screaming his own name while firing a cannon at a wall made of air horns. Brace yourself.

He's about as big as a bulldozer too

It causes traffic: Construction causes a ridiculous amount of traffic, be it foot traffic or road traffic. All the construction around campus means that people have to walk in very specific routes to get to their classes. This means that the slow walkers get in everyone's way and make everybody late to class. They'll walk three across, as per usual, but the narrow pathways mean that I can't pass the three stooges and get where I need to go on time. It also closes roads that we use all the time. The other day I was trying to take a left onto one of the busiest roads in Columbia, and there was a guy in an orange vest and a hard hat standing there shaking his head and looking at me as if I were the moron in the situation. Right, because why would I have any reason to believe that I could take the same left that I take every day?

Columbia during "campus improvement"

The absolute worst part about the construction is that there's no way to avoid it. Every single year, they finish a construction project and start another one. All they can say to the tour groups, when they're looking at giant mounds of dirt, is "imagine how nice this will look in 5 years." It's awful. It's a never ending cycle of Hell on campus. 

I hope you all enjoyed this week's post. I'll see you all right back here next week for yet another complaint.