A Not-So-Big Dig

Fresh out of college, I spent a couple of years living and working in and around Boston, Massachusetts. When my family and I arrived in the city, we discovered that we had landed squarely in the middle of "The Big Dig."

Those three words, a nickname for the nearly two-decade-long Central Artery/Tunnel Project in metro Boston, still strike fear into the hearts of anyone who lived in that city during the hectic days of the Dig. Over $14.6 billion in federal money went into this massive highway reconstruction effort, ostensibly to relieve traffic congestion by reconfiguring the main roadways in and around the city.

Let's put it this way - if you have ever complained about road construction in either Phoenix or the Chicagoland area, you would have thanked your lucky stars for it had you lived through The Big Dig.

I mention this because of the construction going on outside our windows here in Barrel Student Center III on the Glendale Campus. The Cafeteria housed next door in Barrel II is undergoing renovation and expansion, and consequently there is a lot of dust, more than a few construction workers, and heavy machinery passing back and forth past our windows from dawn until dusk.

Of course, this expansion project is nowhere near as expensive as The Big Dig was, nor is it even close to causing Big Dig levels of inconvenience. But it does strike a similar chord in that the longer a construction program goes on, the less one tends to notice it or the disruptions to one's daily routine... until, finally, the daily routine would be interrupted if the construction was not occurring.

Indeed, I think I will actually miss the sights and sounds of the backhoes, cement mixers, and safety-vest-clad hardhatters once this project is done (although it will be nice to use our other set of doors again).

They will, of course, be gone at some point in the near future, leaving behind a sparkling new Cafeteria for Midwestern University faculty, staff, and students to enjoy - just as The Big Dig eventually did get finished (after 17 years, of course) and, miraculously, did much of what it was designed to do for Boston.

For now, we are still entertained by the sight and sounds of order being created from disorder on the other side of our walls. And if we are inconvenienced by it now, the rewards will be worth it.