How I Overcame Depression

From my school days, I dreamt off studying Electrical Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology(BUET). So, getting admission into BUET was always like making-my-dream-come-true. Finally, after waiting more than 7 months, my class started on 7th May 2012. The day was not that exciting that I perceived before. There are few reasons behind it. I almost get distracted from study due to the long break. Also, I am passing though a severe migraine problem at that time. The last point is very interesting though. I always though that I would be financially independent after getting into BUET. I have seen BUET students earn a decent amount of money by private tutoring. For god sake, I could not manage good private tuition at that time. Moreover, I interviewed into Udvas coaching which is famous in Bangaldesh as a teacher⁠—but failed miserably.

As a direct consequences of depression, my first semester result was such a disastrous. Also, I was passing through a serious family crisis. All these things dragged me into a deep depression.

The depression was so intense that I could not concentrate on anything. I am reading the same line again and again to understand the topic. I am trying my best to concentrate but I cannot hold my concentration more than 5 seconds. All the time, I feel that I cannot focus as my head is stuck on something. That something is consuming my processing power and left few percentage for me. It was really a difficult time for me.

The day passing by, my academic progress is getting worse. But one thing I notice that whatever my theory course result is, I am doing good in all lab courses. One of the reason I realized that, I always love to do hardware development from my childhood. I love lab work and tinkering. This is the only thing I love to do all the time. I can work on building things, developing electronics hardware without getting tired. So, I figured out that this is the only time I forget about my pathetic life.

Then on day, I thought⁠—Ok, I need to get back my concentration. So, why not start with the thing I love to do and I enjoy doing. At that time, I always keep myself busy learning different stuffs. Sometimes, Microcontroller, sometimes video editing, sometimes learning Photoshop, sometimes build hobby electronics project, sometimes watching new video on new software tool. I also participated different robotic competition at that time. After all, I focus more on developing my hardware development skill. Although, I did not have particular goal after getting chance into BUET. But, I always wanted to be a good engineer who can solve problems and can build any electronic hardware project. So I am reaching to my dream at this time compromising academic result. I realized that the trade-off pays off in future by getting back my concentration.

The style of learning varies from person to person. Some people learn reading books, some people learn by own experience. I am the second type of person. You know⁠—learning by experience has a cost. You need to experiment more, and spend more time. It is not good idea for now but somehow it is working for me to overcome this critical time. The best idea is not that works for all. That best is that works only for you.

The exams of BUET are really terrifying to me. You have to solve a lot of engineering problems before exam from different books. Not only this, you also need to solve all the previous year problems. At one point I asked myself⁠—I can’t even solve a problem without solution manual, How could I be a good engineer? Then I realized that people solved these problems experimenting years after years and I have to memorize these problem within one hour before the exam to get an engineering certificate. Therefore, after getting good understanding of the topic, I let it go.

One day I had an opportunity of 3 hours conversation with Professor Muhammad H. RASHID⁠—Fellow of IEEE(USA) and famous writer of many engineering books specially on electronics and power electronics. At one point I asked him, “What do you think, engineer should focus more on?” He replied “Engineer should know how to make things. You will get 70 students out of 100 who get A+ in my Power electronics course but you rarely get one student who is able to build a functional inverter.” That was very inspiring for me. Because at that I was building a 1KW Pure Sine Wave Inverter funded by IEEE PES working a volunteer research student. You will get to see the video on my YouTube channel.

After all these, when people ask me, how to get rid of from depression. I always say⁠—do whatever you love to do & keep yourself fucking busy. Never let your mind free for a second to think that you are fucked up.