Summertime is renovation time here at Harvard Law School. Last year, when I came back just before classes started, I (along with the rest of the student body) was stunned to see the plaza outside the Hark (the student union building) rebricked and relandscaped and decked out with nice benches and tables and chairs (which draw people in crowds for the 5 weeks out of the school year when the weather is nice enough to sit on a chair outside). But even more astounding were the renovations made to Pound Hall, our primary classroom building. The first floor was gutted and redone in beautiful wood and new furniture. Pound Hall had been a dungeon left over from the 60s, when law students took notes with paper and pen (imagine!), and when chair technology was at a nadir. So last summer they installed the internet (and more importantly, outlets so our laptops can survive a two-hour class period) and comfy chairs and new desks. It's nice. I didn't even recognize one room that I had had a class in the year before.

This summer, we were promised a complete renovation of the Hark itself. The Hark, along with its ugly siblings, the buildings of the Gropius Complex (collectively, "Gropius"), is a historical landmark. The famous Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius designed the union building and the dorms as the prototypes of what future college buldings should be like. And he was very successful. Whenever I ask HLS visitors what decade they think Gropius was built, they say "The 50s or 60s." That's what they look like, but the correct answer is the 20s. Problem is, because of their historical importance, we can't tear them down and replace them with buildings more modern than what you'd expect from the 50s.

Somehow, though, they were able to get permission to renovate the Hark (and here comes my very small point for writing this whole rambling post (prepare to be underwhelmed)), and that was the plan for this summer. But now that I'm back and school starts in two and a half weeks, construction on the Hark looks like its nowhere close to being done. Are we going to have a place to purchase our textbooks before classes start? Where are we going to get all the annoying flyers from recruiters and campus organizations, if not in our Harkboxes (personal mailboxes that were one of the main impeti for renovation)? It will be very entertaining to see if they get it all done in time for the new 1Ls and orientation the day after Labor Day.

The really sad news, though, is that although we were told that the second floor of Pound Hall (where I had just as many classes last year as on the first, renovated, floor) would be renovated to match the first floor, it's still stuck in the 60s. No plugs. No warmth. No hope, because this is my last year.