You Can't Go Back

The view from a colleague's office this week shows the new building looking dangerously like a building. There are dozens of contractors installing utilities and putting up frames for the walls. The floors were poured just before final exams. Now that the semester has ended, the construction has gotten intimately close. All the faculty with offices on the west end (those facing this sight) had to clean out and move their furniture this week. Some could just shift things away from the windows, others needed to completely empty the room. On Thursday, crews came to move the heaviest items into storage (in my labs, because where else?) and Friday different crews came to disconnect the heating fixtures and begin to build temporary walls. After the temporary walls are up, the exterior wall will be demolished and replaced with a new wall, which will form one side of the three-story atrium that eventually will join our existing building to the new construction. In the photo above, you can see the two bridges that will span the atrium so that we can get from one side to the other. My department will move up to the top floor.

We are all coming closer to accepting that this is happening. That we will have to move out of our offices next spring into temporary spaces, and that the building we've known for years (up to 30 years for some people) will be transformed into something different. Already, the new construction has made irreversible changes. The basement is no longer department storage and student study space: it has been gutted in preparation for the new mechanical equipment. Our rooftop greenhouse has been deconstructed and now one can look out over an almost-featureless rooftop from the hallway windows that used to provide a sunny view of tame jungle. Part of me wants to cling protectively to the familiar, shabby, grimy walls and fixtures. Another part of me knows that's silly and hopes that the shiny new stuff can help me forget the old stuff. This time of transition, which will last at least another year, is going to be difficult.

I spent the first half of the week finishing my grading and calculating final grades. I did some cleaning: throwing out decades-old sets of textbook transparencies, packing books for recycling, putting the detritus of the just-ended semester in order. Next week, I'll get serious about my summer goals. I have a list of about 18 things I want to do; that's not entirely realistic so we'll have to see how much I actually do.