After realizing these weren’t the good flavor of CDs, Ilan Hannan could be overheard saying, “Eject, eject, eject!”
Photo by: Jessica Ma
Graduating computer science major Ilan Hannan was struck by the realization this week that his degree prepared him to be more of a computer than a scientist.
“I assumed we would be testing hypotheses more,” said Hannan, who got an A in his recent CSE172 course, Telling Apart Ones and Zeros.
“I thought that having a science background would allow me to work in a variety of fields. Guess it does, as long as those fields need someone to shut up and code.”
Hannan, described by peers as “basically an ALU with eyes,” has been struggling to find permanent employment after graduation. Despite UCSD’s Computer Science program making him an extremely capable and hirable applicant for most hi-tech industry jobs, the small shred of humanity left inside this overheated CPU of a man has hindered Hannan from fulfilling his purpose and reaching out to the multiple high-paying jobs he can secure.
“Shouldn’t I experiment with doing something I love?” Hannan asked himself, in a way clearly only a flawed reinforcement learning machine could. “I have all these directions I could go in, and these theories for how I would feel if they went right or wrong, and I know what I could do to test those theories. But aargh, I don’t know what I’d do after. If only we were taught some kind of methodology to handle these things.”
When asked, CSE Professor David Ballantine commented on his former student’s identity crisis.
“Oh, that fail state looping FSM? Yeah I remember him from my class,” Ballantine stated. “He never could keep his out port shut. Always ‘why this,’ or ‘how come that,’ or ‘are you just setting me up to be Turing-complete?’”
A close colleague of Hannan expressed a similar concern towards her friend.
“Ilan would always explore all the options available to him,” started Judy Cordray, considered by classmates and professors as “the shining example of overclocking.” “He doesn’t short circuit on situations when he can, he always likes to look at the whole tree, even if it’s already been Dijkstra’d to shit.”
In the months leading up to graduation, “wrong-side-up USB” Hannan has slowed down his involvement in the programming world and his job hunt. He has reportedly started to wear a lab coat and walk around with a magnifying glass to “make up for lost time.”
“He’s completely nuts,” Judy commented. “There is no logical, gate-to-gate path to what he is doing. He’s just trying stuff out and not caring about how unprepared he is to purchase a one point three mil home in Redwood City at age 27.”
Ilan “The One State NFA” Hannan was recently found talking about “thinking outside the box.” Hannan’s peers are yet unsure which box of failed future career choices he was referring to.
At printing time, Hannan decisively rose from his floor mattress and exclaimed, “I’ve reached a decision! I think I’ll call my dad.”
Barak Tzori is an MQ Alum and was Editor-in-Chief for the 2016-17 school year.
