For better or worse, I’ve decided to abandon my previous capstone project (related to seed sovereignty and rural development in the Dominican Republic). I’ve been having some doubts about it for a while, and what it comes down to is that I feel I simply don’t have a strong enough background in international political economy or development policy to write a thesis in the area. Though in the long run that’s probably where my scholarly interests are headed, I’m worried that at this point, anything I wrote about it would read like a book report, or even come off as propagandistic. I’d want a better grounding in the field so that I could at least identify where the holes in my analysis might be, or to recognize what key details I might be overlooking. While I would no doubt build my base of knowledge over the next 5 months, I still don’t think that’s enough time to develop an intuitive sense for the field.
Plus, I think it seems appropriate that my senior capstone would more directly draw upon the bulk of coursework I’ve done at LC. That is, something related to the built environment, utopianism and environmental justice. I think I’ll be a much happier, saner human and have a higher-quality end product if I treat my thesis as a capstone—a culmination of all the work I’ve done up until this point—rather than forcing it to be the first step of a completely new academic trajectory. I don’t really know why this didn’t occur to me before, because now it seems so obvious. I’m definitely happy I took this little 2-month detour in developing my project, as it pushed me toward a body of literature I find extremely compelling and that I will certainly continue to pursue. But, I’m also feeling much more confident about the whole thesis process now that I’ve decided to change course a bit.
So, now the question is where am I heading? What will I do? Stay tuned…
