The first draft has been submitted! It was 52-pages long, and the product of innumerable hours locked in the library and Sellwood coffee shops with my fellow seniors. T’was a bit of a struggle, but I got it done and feel good! There are a number of sections I know need to be expanded/ further developed (and a few I completely forgot to write), but overall I feel like I definitely have a solid start.
Somewhat incredibly, one of the members of my honors committee has already given me feedback on the draft, so I can start moving forward with my edits. She pinpointed virtually all of the major concerns I had been feeling (but conveniently ignoring) about my thesis. It was good to be called out on those, and to know that I do indeed have to address them to bring my paper up to snuff. Here are the key, big-picture things I need to work on for my next draft:
- Just generally tying together the top and bottom halves of my argument. Currently, the paper is a bit disjointed, and could be strengthened by more consistently applying the analytic frameworks I set up.
- More specifically, given that Masdar City is not intended to be democratic/emancipatory, is a discussion of utopianism/postpolitics even relevant? I think that it is, but I need to be explicit about my reasoning, as well as its shortcomings.
- I end up painting a fairly rosy picture of modernist planning and its ideals of “social harmony.” I think I need to be more critical about this, earlier on in the paper.
- I need to refine the “so what?” piece of my thesis. I make a lot of strongly-worded points up through the middle of my hourglass, but at the very end I’m not sure I really tie it all together.
Accomplishing all of the above will take quite a bit of elbow grease, but I’m confident I can get it done in the next few weeks! Hoping to have draft #2 completed before I leave for Cuba (!!) on March 20th.