“I’m really sick and tired of waiting for that building to be finished. How much longer do I have to wait to use it?” says the elderly gentleman wearing a blue blazer walking towards Enterprise, in front of the unfinished Exploratory Hall.
His sentiment is one that is common yet quite overused.
We get it. Mason has a lot of construction. Mason, where renovation is tradition. But no one seems willing to accept the fact that the waiting may be worth the wait. Mason was founded as an independent university in 1972, which makes our university a mere 41 years old.
Compared to the University of Virginia, founded in 1819, and William and Mary, founded in 1693, Mason is a baby.
This young age makes Mason susceptible to a lot of weaknesses, one of them being growing pains.
A young university will inherently struggle to fill its shoes.
Mason does not have the luxury of being a university that has had upwards of 200 years to figure out what it is going to look like.
Instead, we are forced to face challenges that other universities skate around using their age.
So as we travel on the road to the future, these older universities stall—stumbling over their deficiencies and holding onto their past. Mason moves forward uninhibited by the need to cling to a historical past.
So unfortunately, attending such a new university means that you have to go without a few buildings for a semester or two, creating a temporary inconvenience.
In the long run, however, these construction projects work toward a common goal of creating a modern university that is able to provide the best resources for its students.
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