Home‎ > ‎What's Up‎ > ‎

Rutgers University

posted Feb 2, 2010, 11:11 AM by Quoc-Anh Vuong
After much discussion that Saturday morning, whether to wait for the university to accept our registration to be on the formal tour or just go & explore on our own, we decided to plunge ahead: Just drive up there & do what we want to do! The outcome did not surprise me, because my theory is that genetic always win! It's just another case of evolution over logic. You see, each of us already has that adventurous gene in us, we want to explore since birth which helped us learn how to crawl, then walk, and invention of transportation. So, if based on logic the winning choice of visiting the university in style like: riding on the Rutgers' Bus, getting to know the school history & events, talking to attending students, guiding by a faculty member, etc.; but instead we threw logic out the window and yielded to our exploration gene; but I digress. Anyway, we stocked up our van with drinks, snacks, warm clothes, books, movies, electronic games to entertain ourselves during the trip, and off we went.

The trip was long and the tolls were plenty, but we arrived after four hours later. First thing first: we visited the famous grease truck, the food truck which serves fast foods to students and tourists like us. The location is just perfect: three food trucks are positioned in a parking lot, about half block up from the Student Center, on College Avenue, right in front of the University's bus stop. There was a small line, looking up the mobile kitchen order window. We sample famous named sandwiches and cheese fries. Even though the portions are big & they taste not bad at all, we still want more! After finishing three sandwiches and fries, we walked to the downtown area, where all the businesses & student hang-out places are located. Walked into a noodle shop, Noodle Gourmet, we decided to give it a try. It was a Saturday afternoon and the shop were half filled with students. The menu offers a mixture of Asian dishes, and hard to find the authenticity. You can find Wonton as well as  Rice noodles (Phở), they are looked authentic, but the taste does not like any of them; each has a twist which not easy to recognize. Perhaps it's the chef's interpretation of the authentic food.

After filled with the strange twisted noodles, we recon at the Rutgers Student Center, to look at the campus map & plan our next destinations. The Rutgers University at New Brunswick is actually composed of 4 different campuses: Livingston, Busch, College Avenue (ie. Grease Trucks), and Cook/Douglas. Going from one to another requires either bus or drive. Biking is possible, but I would not recommended, unless the trips are within only one campus. No wonder the school offers it's own bus operation, and the bus looks very nice! I really wanted to ride on one. we drove to Busch campus, because that's where School of Engineering is located.
Buildings at Busch campus are fairly new, modern style; quite a contrast with the red bricks & traditional buildings at the College Avenue campus we saw earlier. We passed the Physics & Astronomy, School of Engineering, Biology lab, Electrical ... on and on, one building after another. The place is so big. We stopped at a building, which is housed the University own radio station, to snap off few pictures. It was around 4pm, and we knew that it's going to be a long drive home, so we headed back to the main College Avenue campus for a quick stop & headed home.

It was a fun day trip and we glad that we did, because we never get the answer from the online registration for the official university tour. However, I want to revisit it again, because the school is so big, and we did not have enough time to visit all the attractions and nice places which school has to offer.

Rutgers University



Comments