As with the whole concentration process so far, editing my concentration has been more difficult than planned. I mean just editing a rough draft couldn’t be that hard, right? Well according to all the time I put into it this past week, not quite. I had felt pretty good about my concentration draft when that was due the first week of October and the steering committee had some strong critiques, but they liked many of my ideas. But, it wasn’t quite as easy as just changing the things that they say.
First of all, I had to figure out the exact scale and focus I wanted. The steering committee had questioned my focuses of AgTech and Entrepreneurial Methods. I realized that the entrepreneurship part of my original concentration wasn’t really well developed and I had just added it to give my concentration more focus and originality. What I was really interested in was this tension between forward thinking technology and traditional societal values and how to overcome these political and social barriers. So I changed the title to “Implementation of High-Tech Agricultural Innovations” which I think gives a better focus for what I want to explore.
Next, the steering committee pointed out that I needed a better understanding of the Green Revolution and other agricultural trends to understand future trends. I did a little more research, but I quickly realized that there was just so much out there and there was no way I could understand it all by the deadline. Then the problem was figuring out what I absolutely needed for my proposal. Following the suggestion of one of the steering committee members, I looked at a book about the introduction of maize in Africa. I didn’t get too much out of skimming this besides that agriculture is much more an agent of change than it is often given credit for. I also looked at a book about agriculture and capitalism, but it was much broader about society than ideal. Though it also showed agriculture as an agent of change. Still unsure of what was really important, I decided to at a food history course as one of my concentration courses to help fill in my understanding.
Finally, I had to edit my questions. I felt like my descriptive and instrumental questions were okay, but I was told my explanatory and evaluative questions were wrong. This, perhaps, took the most amount of time and thought. I definitely underestimated the importance of these questions; they completely define my research and I needed to make sure they matched my focus and interests. After a lot of thought and drafts, I think I finally narrowed the list of questions down to what is really important. I’m still not sure though and they may need further edits, particularly my long list of descriptive questions.
My concentration proposal is at a point where I am comfortable with it. I think it’s pretty solid, but I’m still nervous to see what the steering committee has to say. However, I am fully prepared to make more edits to make it as beautiful a proposal as possible.