The graduate

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The best New Jersey university is Rutgers.

If you're a Princeton snob — and I know who you are, with your hoodies and your bumper stickers and your heads the size of the Chrysler Building — you might raise a quibbling finger in one of your preceptorials to offer proof to the contrary.

You are wrong. You will always be wrong. How can Rutgers, which offers classes on American lawns and turfgrass and dance in Istanbul, ever be beneath you?

I joined the Rutgers community in August 2021. Back then I was a foolish freshman with grand ideas about the Computer Science degree I was pursuing, and how it would let me rake in buckets of cash by moving semicolons around.

I never mastered the semicolon (darn you, little ; symbol!); but I tried. And now I rake leaves to make enough to buy Taco Bell. How the (re)turns have tabled.

But I wouldn't give up my Rutgers education for anything. Is it because I shelled out a ridiculous amount of money for it?

Yes.

But — and it's a big but — I also learned a lot. For example, I learned that desert plants are called xerophytes, and that "Legends of the Fall" is a great novella.

Wasn't I supposed to be taking computer science classes?

Yes, yes, yes. I'll get to those.

At Princeton, you take classes deep in theory and practice computer science by founding companies that make bajillions of dollars (here's looking at you, Jeff Bezos).

At Rutgers, you have to take a core of classes spanning subjects from sociology to history alongside your classes for your major. Why? Nobody knows.

They've just been doing it that way since 1766, when the first graduate asked, "What's sociology 101?" To which the answer at the time was, "What's sociology?" Then: "Holy smokes, you can count to 101?"

My major was a major struggle. Then again, my minors were a major struggle. Everything was a struggle to get my computer science degree.

The most difficult class I ever took was Computer Architecture, taught by Professor Santosh Nagarakatte.

There, I learned valuable things about the architecture of computers, such that if you threw your laptop out the window, I would be able to confidently say which parts of it were broken: all of them.

The second most difficult class I took was Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms, taught by Professor Jie Gao.

The final exam had questions like "If a is to the b power at a speed of 9.8 meters per second squared, what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow if computed using Dijkstra's algorithm?"

To which the answer would be: I have no idea. Nobody does. Not even the Princeton kids.

I graduated from Rutgers in January 2025, a semester ahead of schedule, which I only say because it takes most Princeton kids four years to graduate.

But I did it in three and a half. Am I better than the Princeton kids? Obviously not, but you have to give me credit for trying.

So here I am with my state school degree, writing jokes instead of code. Did I make good use of the thousands of dollars of tuition money? I hope so.

At least I can count to 101.

Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she's never quite; figured; it; out.

Previously:
• The best-laid plans
• Be like Homer Simpson
• 08/20/25: Acting out
• 06/23/25: All talked out
• 02/05/24: Dropping the ball
• 02/05/24: Eye eye, doctor
• 12/30/24: Bad music, cheap concerts, and all that jazz
• 12/04/24: No dollars and no sense
• 09/17/24: Gone crackers
• 09/12/24: A matter of manners
• 08/21/24: Keeping things simple --- is hard
• 08/13/24: DIY = 'Destroy It Yourself'
• 06/26/24: All in a day's work
• 05/23/24: The state of the art
• 05/16/24: Rounding one's corners
• 03/22/24: Gone loopy
• 03/05/24: Philosophy rocks