Hello there! I am renting a room out of a three bedroom house with a detached garage, with two other students. My landlady is turning the garage on property into an additional room for her to rent. There is loud construction noises at all hours of the day. As a student, it hadn't bothered me tremendously (outside of construction workers ringing the doorbell at 8AM), but now that classes are online only and I'm at home, I find myself struggling. This is something that has been going on the past two weeks, every day (including the weekends).

This has impacted my ability to participate in the online lectures. I'm already having a hard time connecting to the material while it is being taught online, and I feel like this is only making it more difficult: Because of all the noises that get picked up on my microphone, I'm not able to talk during classes (there's only so much that can be conveyed quickly via typing, and not all teachers consider that the same level of participation) and I'm concerned it could hurt my grade. I can't go hide in my car during the classes, because I need to take notes and do problems and that's very difficult without a desk. The construction work also makes it difficult to focus on the classes. In addition, one or two of the workers smoke and because I really can't stand the smell of smoke it has prevented me from being able to open windows and go outside for extended periods of time.

With all of this, on top of the corona virus and lockdowns (and how it doesn't matter that I'm "locked down" because the construction workers on property are clearly not), I feel like I want to talk to my landlady and see if there is something she can do to at least reduce the amount of construction work going on (later in the day, after classes, something to make it so that I can concentrate better on my schoolwork). Am I being ridiculous and making a mountain out of a molehill? What can I do, how would I approach this?