davinci’s notebook » Engineering Science

The causes of my depression, part 16: choosing my major

davinci — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:45:23 +0000

In the third year of Engineering Science, I had to make plans for graduate school. The program was divided into a number of options (now called “majors”, which is basically what they are), and I chose Computer Engineering. Unfortunately, it would be two years before the Nanoengineering option became available, although there was a lot of buzz about it at the time. If it had been available, I might have chosen it, as it would have allowed me to study some topics closely related to the construction of quantum computers.

But since that option was not yet available, I turned my attention to control systems. This allowed me to learn more about finite state automata and computational complexity, as well as certain topics in mathematics and physics, in a context which was acceptable to my parents. I was concerned that if they realised I was going to study some of the subjects which they had previously dismissed as “worthless” and “irrelevant” to my future, they would continually distract me with their criticisms and prevent me from continuing my studies. Fortunately, that did not happen — at least for a while.

– davinci

The causes of my depression, part 11: nothing in common with classmates

davinci — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:00:04 +0000

Though I hadn’t realised this at the time, by far the most damaging part of being in the wrong program in the long term was that I had essentially nothing in common with any of my classmates. I’ve heard that it is not unusual for people to form lifelong friendships during their undergraduate years, but I barely interacted with anyone else in the program. Their goals were completely different from mine, as were their attitudes towards learning.

While there were a few guys at the top of the class who were actually passionate about some specific subject, most of the rest of the class wanted only to memorise enough equations, and for long enough, to pass their tests and do well on their assignments. More than once, I have heard, “What are you still studying that for? We don’t need to know that any more (or, until the final exam).” I suppose that this isn’t a problem specific to engineering, but is a flaw inherent in the customary manner of dividing up the topics in a course into units, with an assignment or a test focusing only on the topics in that unit after it has been covered.

But the problem was exacerbated by the rapid succession of topics, due to the nature of the Engineering Science program; I think it would have been much less severe in a program focused on only one subject. In defense of the program, though, this “flaw” could actually be a feature: the ability to absorb new ideas rapidly, while being willing to discard or put aside ideas which are no longer of immediate relevance, is a useful skill in many careers.

But I think that the program provided a very poor environment for training someone who wanted to focus on theory. The theoretical parts of the computer science classes brought bitter complaints from my classmates. Their comments about Scheme and the λ-calculus reminded me of my father’s dismissive remarks about theoretical computer science: that they were “useless”, “silly”, and so on. I suppose that from their perspective they had a point, as most of them would be programming in C/C++ or Java when they graduated, if they continued to program at all. So even though we may have covered some of the same content taught in the computer science program, the environment was not socially conducive to studying those subjects, and I had a much more difficult time with them than I should have.

A large part of the reason I did so well in elementary school and high school was that I was surrounded by people who shared similar interests, whether it was classmates, older students, or teachers. In university, that advantage was removed from me by the fact that I was in a program that was completely unsuitable for someone with my interests and background.

– davinci

The causes of my depression, part 9: rolling with the punches

davinci — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:00:07 +0000

In high school, my life had been synthetic: my academic and social lives were blended together harmoniously, despite my parents’ attempts to disrupt that harmony. In university, I was forced to live essentially two separate lives, and had to divide my attention between them. I suffered greatly through the first two years because it wasn’t until third year that I managed to somewhat integrate the two halves of my life again.

I think that my parents chose a program with such a heavy workload because they believed that it would force me to focus on the subjects that I needed for graduate school while preventing me from having the free time to devote my attention to subjects which had “nothing to do with” a future career in academia. As always, their actions had the opposite effect, and actually shifted my attention away from the physics of computation and towards religion and the Muslim world. This did not damage my computer science career as much as it might have only because I “rolled with the punches”, so to speak: when I entered graduate school in computer science, it was to do research into information retrieval — using skills which I had learned by working on searching through Arabic texts while an undergraduate.

The primary reason I could not concentrate on my computer science and physics classes in university was that almost every single topic they covered was something my parents had attacked me for studying in elementary or high school. I had already learned most of the topics in the applied areas of computer science through having played a lot of computer games and reverse-engineering them as well as writing my own, all the while being attacked by my parents for “wasting time” playing games. And when it came to theoretical computer science and physics, the topics were exactly the ones which my parents had derided as having “nothing to do with computer science”, “frivolous”, “nonsense”, and so on. In other words, they were exactly the topics I had learned through reading books which my parents had forbid me from and beat me for reading. So I was in a position where I had to satisfy my parents’ mutually contradictory demands: on the one hand, I shouldn’t be studying these topics because they were “worthless”; and on the other hand, I had to study them because it was necessary to do so “for school”. I felt very sick when I encountered these topics and couldn’t study, but I did pretty well anyway because I already knew the material. But my marks in my undergraduate classes did not reflect my strengths at all; I did relatively poorly on some of the subjects that I actually knew very well.

Another reason why I couldn’t focus on my studies was that the environment was simply not socially conducive to it. There were two aspects to this: the expectations of my professors, and the attitudes of my classmates. Both aspects stemmed from the fact that the university treated engineering as a vocational program, and the curriculum was designed around this philosophy. Again, this is not a criticism of Engineering Science, which as the “elite” engineering program at the University of Toronto did exactly what it was designed to do: select people who were able to manage an insanely enormous workload while maintaining enough sanity to continue to solve difficult problems. Obviously, the program provided excellent training for certain kinds of careers; but it was not ideal for anyone who wished to acquire a very deep theoretical understanding of any one subject in particular. There was just not enough time for that — each professor treated his or her own class as if it was the only one we had, and scheduled the topics covered accordingly. We jumped rapidly from topic to topic, and learning not to dwell on any topic past its due date was a matter of survival.

– davinci

The causes of my depression, part 8: a “prestigious” degree

davinci — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:00:21 +0000

I was very far ahead of my high school classmates, and by third year I was practically already in university, because I was spending so much time at the University of Toronto libraries. I actually could have entered university after the third year of high school, but my father forbade me from doing so because he disapproved of my academic plans. I had wanted to study computer science and physics (especially astrophysics), with a smattering of courses in religion and history, which I could have done by entering a flexible program with a small workload and then choosing my own courses. I was preparing myself to fill a niche for scientists who could communicate with both computer scientists and physicists, while being in a position to take advantage of the career and monetary opportunities created by the coming shift of the West’s attention to the Muslim world. My father claimed that this was “unfocused” which, of course, was nonsense, considering how carefully I had planned everything out. But more revealingly, he said that a regular science degree was not “prestigious”, which showed where his priorities lied. He would deprive me of the background and training I would need in the future, just so he could satisfy his egotistic need to boast to others that his son was going after a “prestigious” degree in university.

I ended up entering the Engineering Science program after five years of high school. At the time, Ontario actually had what was called the OAC year, and so taking five years of high school was not unusual. (Subsequent school reforms have reduced the length of high school in Ontario to four years.) But I basically wasted two years not being in university because my parents refused to allow me to study what I wanted to study, although I made the best use I could of that time. My parents threatened to disown me if I entered a program that was not acceptable to them. This, of course, did nothing to actually convince me that they were right, but it kept me in check and prevented me from leaving for university. I told them that I would wait until my brother graduated from high school, and then we would go to university together. When my brother had earned enough high school credits to graduate, my parents made me an offer I could not refuse: if I enrolled in the same program as him, they would pay for an apartment for the both of us; otherwise, neither of us would be allowed to attend university. And they actually had the gall to call me “selfish” for not considering what was in my brother’s best interests. I relented.

There really isn’t much to say about my undergraduate years academically other than that it was a huge mistake right from the very beginning. I should never have been in the Engineering Science program. This isn’t a criticism of the program itself, which I actually think is an excellent one for the right people. It was just that I was clearly not one of these people. Nor is this a case of “sour grapes” — I actually did very well in the program, so much so that I felt very guilty about it, because I didn’t try very hard at all, and a lot of my classmates tried really hard and did very poorly anyway.

For any parents who are considering forcing their children to act against their own wishes “for their own good” in the belief that “they don’t know any better” and they will thank you later, I will state unequivocally: NO, THEY WON’T.

– davinci