I suppose that this is really part 7 in a series on overcoming my writer’s block, but it seemed kind of silly to continue with the “writer’s block” theme after writing six posts, the last of which was quite lengthy. I am therefore beginning a new series on the causes of my depression.
However, although I want to continue writing about how I managed to lead an interesting and eventful life and make what I think are meaningful contributions to society in spite of having abusive and controlling parents, my first priority is to get back to science writing as soon as possible. So I want to finish this series quickly, and then begin writing about science.
The content of these posts was actually collected and expanded from notes I took after my sessions with UW Counselling Services and also a private psychiatrist. In these posts, I am going to give a chronological summary of the events leading up to my current severe bout of depression. But before I do so, I will briefly describe my current situation, in order to connect the events of the past to the present.
I was, until recently, enrolled in the Ph.D. program in computer science at the University of Waterloo, studying quantum information and quantum computation at its Institute for Quantum Computing. My topic had originally been information retrieval for bioinformatics when I started the program; my depression began while I was contemplating the switch, and has worsened rapidly since I made it.
It might seem very strange that I would be depressed over being a researcher in quantum computing, because this is exactly what I had imagined I would be doing since the end of elementary school, and in an environment which matched my predictions precisely, down to some very specific details. Most people don’t get to fulfill their childhood dreams, so I should have been very happy. But my dream had been deformed into a nightmare by the very selfish actions of my abusive parents. How they did this will be told in the following posts.
– davinci
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