I woke up in a bright room, except that it was more like the inside of a crate, where the light originated from each of its six walls. I felt like the character of a story where the artist forgot to draw all the furniture, windows, stairs, and even the texture of the floor. All surfaces were spotless, not even shadows would dare rest upon them, as if my own had decided to take a vacation and leave me to my fortune. After a while, the sensation that something was changing inside of me started to effervesce. At first, I thought that perhaps the creator of this empty world was returning to this forgotten project to correct its wrongdoing, or worse, to erase it. I was certain of it, I could almost feel the tip of a giant invisible Faber-Castell eraser trying to dissolve me into nothing, and perhaps that was ok. As I thought that this empty room was about to fulfill its purpose of not holding anything, I woke up, for real this time. Then I realize that this single dream summarized how I felt after submitting my Master’s thesis.
Pursuing a Master’s degree, followed by a doctorate, was in my mind from my first year at university, it was all I knew and all I wanted to do. As a student being constantly told that higher education is crucial for landing an adequate job, I was terrified of not being able to excel during my studies. This led to me developing an unbalanced way of life, where studying and working was at the center of a black hole slowly swallowing me. I was taking classes and working on my dissertation every day of the week.
I would strain my brain every day trying to imprint those last sentences in my dissertation because not doing so meant total annihilation of my career.
It goes without saying that I was miserable during the last months of my Master studies. I expected that things would turn for the better after submitting my dissertation. Unfortunately for me, those feelings just morphed into something new, and transported me to a place of great pain. All I had known for many months was work, nothing else, my life just revolved around it like a desolate planet around a massive star, not able to break from the shackles of gravity that were crushing me. I was empty, I had mistakenly taken everything else out and filled the space with abstract equations and dead-end experiments, and when that was gone, I was left with nothing. Attempting to do anything required so much of my energy, energy that I thought I did not have, I was so convinced of it that I did the only thing I thought myself capable of, nothing.
It is now clear that I was going through onset of depression, and I did perhaps the only thing that could possibly worsen it at that point, not searching for help. I cannot tell with certainty how long I remained in that state, but I am sure it was longer than it could have been if I had looked for support. I took a “sabbatical” and slowly started to recover, but still had to work part-time as the bills started to pile up. Now looking back, I think that luck was on my side, many people helped me recover, many of them not even knowing what I was going through, and I will forever be grateful to them. At the beginning of my sabbatical, I could not avoid thinking that I made a mistake, and that I was ruining my career by taking a step back to gather myself. That is the thing, isn’t it? I was stuck in a state where not working in academia meant doom, and where not giving 110% effort was a sign of “weakness”.
After all that experience, I cannot say that I never go to those dark places, it is hard not to while working in academia. But I have learned to recognize and deal with those situations better. More importantly, I have learned that when faced with such impossible emotional odds, searching for help is crucial, that I am not alone, and that sometimes taking a step back allows me to take two steps forward, perhaps in a different direction.
