Tag Archive for 'quantum computing'

My depression in Waterloo, part 4: switching into quantum computing

Published by davinci on May 25, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

In the first term of my Ph.D., I audited the Quantum Information course taught by Dr. Ashwin Nayak, but did not take it for credit. This was partly because I was so distracted by my predicament, but also because I initially didn’t want the course to appear on my transcript, lest my parents should see it. I was originally just going to sit in on the lectures, but Dr. Nayak convinced me to audit the course, because I had been doing the assignments anyway. And so the course did, in fact, appear on my transcript after all.

During the next several terms, I took some courses to satisfy my degree requirements, while I searched for a way to do research into quantum computing without my parents’ interference. I started to become depressed, because, perhaps unsurprisingly, my parents had begun to attack me for studying bioinformatics. I suppose that the onset of my depression had always only been a matter of time… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. My depression in Waterloo, part 3: my Master’s degree in computer science
  2. My depression in Waterloo, part 6: meeting people
  3. My depression in Waterloo, part 5: feeling “unworthy”
  4. My depression in Waterloo, part 2: role reversal and sacrifice
  5. My depression in Waterloo, part 11: the biggest regret of my life
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My depression in Waterloo, part 1: the first term

Published by davinci on May 18, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The previous series of posts, called “The causes of my depression”, established the triggers that set off my depression. Since coming to Waterloo, I have been encountering these almost every single day. I am therefore beginning a new series on (the effects of) my depression in Waterloo. As before, these posts were expanded from notes I took after my sessions with UW Counselling and a private psychiatrist.

The University of Waterloo is run on a system of three terms (or semesters) of four months each per academic year. The first term actually went very well for me, right up until near the end of the term, when I made the mistake of consenting to a visit from my parents… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. My depression in Waterloo, part 5: feeling “unworthy”
  2. My depression in Waterloo, part 8: disguising my research
  3. My depression in Waterloo, part 6: meeting people
  4. My depression in Waterloo, part 9: exposed
  5. My depression in Waterloo, part 13: dropping out
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Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school

Published by davinci on April 9, 2009 in academic writings, autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I have already written previously about how counterproductive authoritarian parenting is, but this is a fact that I simply cannot emphasise enough. Educators are always talking about the importance of encouraging children to read and write, but my parents have always discouraged me from both. Maybe this sounds unbelievable, but I think it is quite common among parents from certain cultural backgrounds. My parents dismissed anything that I read or wrote outside of what was required for school or a job or some other official purpose as “frivolous” and a “waste of time”.

My parents had mostly ignored my writings in elementary school, but I think this was because they had assumed that everything I wrote was “for school”. My father would occasionally pick up something I had written; he would frown or glare at me, or make some negative remarks, but at that time he did not order or pressure me to stop. I think his comments at the time were mostly directed at the school system for what he perceived to be a waste of my time for requiring me to write essays on topics he considered unimportant — or, even worse, fictional stories… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview
  5. How I managed to be so successful in high school
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My academic and personal background

Published by davinci on October 13, 2008 in personal and social issues. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I suspect that my background is rather atypical for an academic. While I was growing up, my parents not only did not support my scientific interests, but did everything in their power to prevent me from becoming successful as a scientist.

I first became interested in the connection between physics and computer science in elementary school, when I read about Richard Feynman’s idea of a quantum mechanical simulator. In high school, I obtained a University of Toronto library card with the help of Dr. John R. Percy, and spent a lot of time at the Erindale College library. (The Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto was called Erindale College at the time.) Through my association with the library, I was introduced to the arXiv, and also learned about the black hole information loss problem. The problem fascinated me, and I therefore set about studying what I could of quantum computation and quantum information. The arXiv also inspired me to think about how electronic publishing would affect scientific communication in the future… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. Mixing personal and academic blogging
  2. The causes of my depression, part 6: how Mrs. Mallo saved my academic career
  3. Being socially active is important to academic success
  4. The causes of my depression, part 1: a summary of the present situation
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