Jenny Joplin

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You have heard of Jenny Joplin.

This is not a question; it is an undeniable fact. To most students of the University of Auckland, she is known through rumour and legend: Lord of Piazza, Queen of All Tech Clubs, Bane of Munchie Mart.

But in the Part III Software Engineering cohort of 2025, the legend takes flesh.

The year was 2023, and Part I Engineering was beginning. High school graduates timidly shrugged off their school uniforms. Homesick foreigners flew in from afar. People streamed onto Campus on February 27th 2023 – on cars, buses, trains and estimable Lime scooters. Wide-eyed students looked upon the great halls of the Fisher & Paykel Auditorium and were awed. The air was slick with tension and excitement, strung into a knot of far-flung trepidation. So many new places, new names, new fears – what to wear, who to meet, and above all the singular question: were they getting a job after this?

But there was one who feared nothing.

Jenny Joplin’s name preceded her. Many knew her already from the swathe of accolades she had collected across high school. She could be seen every single day sitting at the very front of the lecture hall – her hair golden brown, texture like sun – and oh, how the students gossiped. Somehow, all the lecturers seemed to know her already – while they treated all other students in their typical joy and conceit, they looked upon Jenny Joplin with a knowing kind of awe. They knew what was to come.

By week 1, Jenny had answered almost every single question on Piazza, beating all others to the punch – even Kevin Jia and Hazim Namik. From the way she answered ENGGEN 115 Piazza questions, you’d think she had to be a TA and not a Part I student; turns out she was somehow both. Myth and Legend escaped the forum and spread across campus like a fire – the Lord of Piazza was born.

It soon became clear that perhaps Jenny was not human.

The year is now 2025, and her CV boasts 36 First in Course Awards (6 per semester). Her LinkedIn profile blazes with the light of 9 thousand followers (incoming AUSA President Nimish trails behind at 4 thousand). She doesn’t grind Leetcode anymore, not after she solved every problem. Every now and again she tries to speedrun all of Hackerrank; her record clocks in at just over 2 hours.

Jenny has exec roles in every single tech club in the university, from SESA to DEVS to UOACS (allegedly). She once became President of GDGC just to change its name it back to GDSC before resigning. The next President was too chicken to reverse the change. In WDCC, she’s been a Co-President, a Project Exec, a Tech Exec, an Industry Exec, a project manager, a tech lead and a project member – all simultaneously. The project of which she was a project member (and tech lead (and project manager (and Tech Exec (and Project Exec)))) was completed in approximately three weeks and 6 days. She spent the rest of the year furiously attempting to make WDCC projects count towards practical work hours. She’s still working on that one.

Jenny had been in Computer Systems Engineering at first, before she switched over to SOFTENG. Nevertheless, she never stopped tinkering with embedded systems and machines – you could take the gal outta COMPSYS, but you couldn’t take COMPSYS outta the gal. Every week she was creating some new app or machine or device that could do things that beggared belief. Imagine something, anything – she’s probably already made it and posted about it on LinkedIn.

In ENGGEN 303, her team’s innovation – a machine that made piping hot pies in approximately 3.141 seconds – revolutionised the industry overnight. Piebot vending machines were ripped from all premises in wanton vigour, their pies fed to the pigeons; Munchie Mart almost went into liquidation (before coaxing back customers with extra cans of V); the Velocity 100K Challenge was cancelled and the award given straight to her. The machine itself was proudly placed in the old Needo venue for all to share in its bounty, at the low low price of $3.14. The Prime Minister came down to Kate Edger one time and a denigrating photo was taken of him scoffing down one of the machine’s pies – the resulting internet meme raged across r/newzealand for months, and the bad rep may yet cost him the election.

Of course, Jenny had fulfilled her 800 hours of practical work experience years ago, having co-founded Halter alongside Craig Piggott at the burgeoning age of 10. Legend has it that she’s never made a single job application – instead, the companies apply for her. They love her – and fear her. Every industry night, they set up a stall specifically for Jenny. The company representatives line up to beg for her services, sometimes bearing gifts to convince her to join them. Serato once gave her an entire DJ set. Sandfield pledged her their entire supply of Sandfield-brand bottle openers. One time a Jane Street employee offered to straight up give her their own job.

And yet still she finds time for more: from university research projects to freelance software work, from Class Representative to Unleash Space Creative Technologist, from Valorant by day to Minecraft by night. And more. And more. And more.

So, yes – you have heard of Jenny Joplin: Lord of Piazza, Queen of All Tech Clubs, Bane of Munchie Mart. The one who knows all and fears nothing. She is the pinnacle of her age, and she knows it.

But when Jenny Joplin returns from the hubbub of uni-life, it is a different story.

It is 1:32 AM by the time Jenny returns to her dorm. She’d been on campus for about 18 hours and 52 minutes. Jenny shuts her door and collapses into bed. She tosses and turns through the night, writhing like a gypsy as terrible thoughts pour through her head. She shuts her eyes, but the night terrors pour through her vision, relentless.

She never sleeps, never eats. Deadlines and Deliverables hang over her head with nauseous pallor. So much to do – so much she wants to do – and they eat away at her, day by day. The unimaginable weight of her… Talent? Potential? IQ? All so ephemeral and meaningless. She feels about to fall apart at the pull of a string; and an unwieldy stone of Stress hangs at the end of that string, growing heavier by the second. One day it will pull her apart, and her entire being shall unfold and flutter away like a house of cards.

She spends time on exams like beer at a bar – hoping the First in Course awards give her some feeling. She doomscrolls Leetcode – she hates it, hates it all with a vehement passion; and yet still she repeats those problems, over and over again. Hoping that one day she finds a different perspective. The joys of her marvels are nothing to her now.

“What would Craig Piggot say?”, she thinks numbly. She doesn’t know. In a uniquely deep pit of despair, she wonders if she can get herself a smart-collar that could nudge her onto the right path. To let her mind dissolve and give her time to just play Valorant all day again.

She turns and turns and turns. She fills her head with dreams and nightmares, until she can bear them no longer and spews them out in delirious tirades, back into the Work from whence they came. The work is endless, but rewarding – so, so rewarding – but endless. An Oroboros of bless and stress.

Jenny’s name precedes her; and oh, how it soars away into the clouds and the stars. And she becomes Jenny no longer.

Who is Jenny?

You have heard of Jenny Joplin. Because Jenny Joplin is you. Jenny Joplin is all of us – the entire cohort of Part III Software Engineering, if we were all combined into a single human being. All of our strengths and weaknesses, our accolades and embarrassments, our thoughts and feelings – forged into one super-individual. In the Part III Software Engineering cohort of 2025, the legend takes flesh.

Collectively, we have answered almost every Piazza and Ed Discussion question. Together, we are the body and soul of all the tech clubs, before we pass on the torch to our juniors beneath us. All of those software companies love us – they flock to industry nights and pitch themselves to us, hoping beyond hope that we join them.

And we are afraid, so terribly, terribly afraid. Behind closed doors, we whimper in terror as all of our anxieties – whatever they may be – crush us from within. Some of us try to ignore the terror; others let it consume them; others think it won’t come for them; but that latent terror shall claim each of us yet.

But the terror will not hurt us. Not when we are One, when we are, all of us, Incredible. In the span of a few years we have done things that would take the heart of our young selves, still timid in their school uniforms. And still we have much yet to do. We are all capable of feats beyond comprehension, and the world shall quiver in fear as we leave the hatchery of University and fly into life proper. We shall fly into the clouds and the stars and claim our rightful name back.

We have all heard of Jenny Joplin – and the world has heard of her, too.