Fast forward six hours and 45 minutes later, and I woke up to what sounded like a tractor trailer backing up right outside my window. I soon found out that construction workers were working on the roofs of the four buildings. This work involved the use of the largest forklift I’ve seen in my life, which emits an incredibly loud beeping noise whenever it backs up. I figured that I could probably fall back to sleep, and I did—until the beeping started 10 minutes later, and occurred about every 10 minutes after that.

Now, I’m all for safety precautions, but when you start waking up students during their quiet hours, it becomes a problem. I slept through all sorts of loud music and yelling during my first year. Apparently, Residence Life has no problem punishing us for these offenses, yet they feel that loud construction at 6:45 am is perfectly appropriate. Luckily for me (and the other residents of Colonie), the construction was moved to 7 am the next day, which allowed me to get a much-needed 15 minutes of extra sleep. This continued through the rest of the week, was absent on Saturday and Sunday morning, and resumed this past Monday.

The thing I fail to understand is why this work was not completed over the summer, while students were away from campus and the construction would not bother nearly as many people. Granted, the Institute has many ongoing projects, and I certainly appreciate any improvements made to the campus facilities. I feel, however, that the timing of the work was poorly planned. And if the construction was indeed started early, but then took longer than expected, arrangements should have been made so that it would not interfere with the well-being of students.