[agumonkey]

My college was far from bad, and covered lots of theoretical[1] ideas. I'd be surprised if 10% of graduate students understood them. Unless you are very abstract and passionated, 5 years aren't enough to connect all the dots I believe.

[1] surprisingly we didn't have a complexity course per se. We had optimizing compilation, type theory/interpretation, abs.alg/cryptography, all forms of relational algebras/calculus[2] etc, formal systems/symbolic processing. more than 50% of students failed, 25% struggled to get points, 25% kept their head above the water.

[2] which is funny, some concepts like transitive closure of relations and db normalization seemed hard and ideal toys, but much later I found that the first is similar to an abstract recursive fold (and folds are nice to have), and normalization gives you a better 'object' modeling theory better than most floating OO principles you read in books.