My depression in Waterloo, part 11: the biggest regret of my life
[
Permalink]
I suppose that I should explain why, even though my parents had caused me so much pain and were actively opposed to everything that I did, I did not break off contact with them much earlier. In retrospect, I wish that I had run away from home in high school. Not having done so is the biggest regret of my life.
I had actually discussed in high school with some friends my intention to run away from home, but I was talked out of it. It wasn’t that they had given me reasons not to run away; they were the reasons not to run away… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
My depression in Waterloo, part 10: disowned
[
Permalink]
The locations of some of the upcoming conferences and events at the time were also a source of depression for me. I wrote in a previous post that none of the people my supervisor worked with were Iranians, but one of his co-authors, whose papers I was studying, did have a connection to Iran. Dr. Barry Sanders of the University of Calgary, who shared my belief that it was very important for scientists from Iran and the West to interact with each other, was instrumental in playing a part in organising the International Iran Conference on Quantum Information, which was to take place in September 2007 on Kish Island in Iran. And the QIP workshop 2008, which was actually in December of 2007, was held in New Delhi, India.
Now these were countries that I had wanted to visit for personal reasons… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
My depression in Waterloo, part 9: exposed
[
Permalink]
One of the main difficulties in coping with abusive parents is that it is often impossible to explain your motivations to others. I expressed to Dr. Cleve that I wanted to look for a research topic connected with engineering, and he was glad to assist me with this. But I never fully explained to him all of the restrictions that I was under, and I guess he must have been frustrated that I wasn’t as enthusiastic about many of his suggestions as I would have been if I didn’t have my parents’ reaction to them to consider.
Because I couldn’t find a way to disguise my research or to connect it to a topic that was acceptable to my parents, I was under a lot of stress while I carried it out. It’s very difficult to conduct scientific research unless one is excited about a topic, and it’s very difficult to be excited about a topic that causes one to experience physical and psychological pain. (I think even a masochist enjoys physical pain only because it gives him psychological pleasure.) My life in the Ph.D. program as a quantum computing researcher consisted of exactly the activities that my father had punished me so severely for in high school: … » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
My depression in Waterloo, part 8: disguising my research
[
Permalink]
The next several posts were especially difficult for me to write, but they are also the most important in my autobiographical series. Every post in the series up to now had been written for the purpose of setting up these ones.
In the previous posts, I have described the damage caused by my parents’ anti-intellectualism and their hatred of science to my scientific career. They have been persecuting me for my interest in science, and more broadly for my intellectual interests in general, ever since they came to Canada. They kept up their attacks on my scientific research throughout high school, right through university, and even into graduate school. By the time I entered the Ph.D. program in computer science and switched into quantum computing as my research area — which my parents had forbidden me to study under pain of being disowned — the regular day-to-day activities of a scientific researcher, such as reading papers or having discussions with colleagues, would cause me to experience physical pain.
Obviously, this prevented me from focusing on my work or making any progress in my research. A question that naturally arises is, “Why would you put so much effort into doing something that is so painful to you?” Or, equivalently, “Why not be doing something else?”… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]