I like alliteration, can you tell?
Anyway, it seems like it’s Pet Peeve Week. Who decided this? Me, just now. What’s my current pet peeve? Well, if you haven’t already guessed, let me give you a hint.
That’s right, it’s construction. I’m sure all of us on the UW Madison campus are intimately familiar with it. It goes on all year long. There’s always some new dorm or apartment going up, some road closed, some building being renovated, some bus route being altered. But when the construction is going on in your back yard – scratch that, when it’s going on outside your window, that brings things to a whole new level of annoying.
Last year, it was the new Lakeshore dorm, Dejope, being built right in front of the dorm I was living in, Bradley. Who doesn’t love the sound of jackhammers in the morning? Me, that’s who. Call me crazy, but I like to sleep past 7 am. I thought that was bad, when the dorm was being built in Bradley’s “front yard”. Little did I know that it was only going to get worse…
See that brick building being dwarfed by that crane? That’s where I live. That crane was so close to my bedroom window, I swear I could’ve reached out and touched it. By the way, that’s a dated picture. There is no longer a giant crane in my back yard. Now there’s a giant building there, still close enough to touch. And every day for a year, in rain, snow, or shine, at 7 am sharp, the construction starts. (Well, every day except Sunday, but who’s counting?)
Technically, it started with deconstruction. There was a building where the new one is now. It was closer in size to my apartment, and was clearly old and dilapidated. By the time the first week of school rolled around, they had started tearing it down. That was fun to watch, when it wasn’t terrifying. I remember a day when I was sitting in my room with my window open, listening to the lovely sounds of machinery and collapsing building, when my roommate walked in and asked if any dust was coming in the window. I told her it wasn’t. Then she asked about the bees. Uh… what bees? The ones that had a nest in the old apartment’s attic. The ones whose nest had been disturbed by said giant machines. The ones who were now suddenly homeless – and pissed about it. Needless to say, I quickly shut my window.
And that was just the beginning. Since then, it’s been rubble literally falling against the side of our apartment – terrifying, let me tell you – huge cranes that I could’ve sworn were going to fall on our building and crush it, and then a ridiculously tall apartment building that blocks our sunlight. And every morning I wake up to something new. In the beginning it was the pounding of demolition. Some days it’s jackhammers, others it’s drilling. Often it’s blaring radio – country, pop, Spanish – the station differs, but it’s never something I want to hear at 7 am. Yesterday it was a table saw that they had set up on a sawhorse. Where? You guessed it – right outside my bedroom window.
Now, I’m no rocket scientist (yet), but I’m not dumb. I’ve invested in earplugs. But yesterday, that stupid saw was intent on ruining my sleep. I woke up at 7 and put in the earplugs, which normally allows me to go back to sleep. That worked for maybe a half hour. I put my pillow over my head, determined to get some more sleep, but to no avail. Half an hour before my alarm went off, I finally gave up.
Dear construction,
I surrender.
You win.
I’ll wake up at 7 am every day, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Said No One Ever at UW 