Pre-Thesis: Too many ideas
I have never been one to not have an idea. More likely than not I have too many ideas and most of them are not very well thought through. This tendency usually pushes me to over-analyze everything and not know what the next step is. Coming up with an idea for my thesis is no expectation. Coming into the first week of class, I had 10 ideas. All were half-baked, but all were things I was interested in.
To try to mitigate my chances of overthinking, I did a small exercise. I wrote all of my ideas on a post-it and gave myself a 5-minute timer. During this time, I did a mental check of what I knew about each topic and what questions I had about them. If I didn’t come up with at least 5 questions I had about the topic within 30 seconds, I would move on to the next post-it. If I found myself going off in a lot of directions about it, I would put a sticker next to it. From the 10 ideas, I was able to bring it down to 5 ideas that I had a lot more questions and thoughts about other than the fact I was curious about. The following were cut for the following reasons.
Continue the history of ballet idea: This was a project I did last semester that I really enjoyed. It was a look into how the development and design of pointe shoes influenced the trajectory of ballet. That being said, I couldn’t come up with any further questions about the topic that I already didn’t answer. It’s a safe bet, but I wouldn’t know where to go with it.
Augment children’s playground: I love the idea of combining real and digital spaces, especially around something with generally good memories like a playground. However, I have no background or skills in AR so the project would be difficult.
Illustrating scientifically something now science: This is more of a method of execution than a subject for a topic.
Childhood education: This just seemed too broad and I couldn’t come up with any ideas about it because of that reason.
Future of toys: I still think it’s a cool idea, but similar to the topic above it’s too broad. I can still keep it and perhaps use it as a method of whatever topic I end up choosing.
Next, I did another similar exercise to try to narrow down my ideas some more. Again, I set myself a 2-minute timer and used it to come up with ideas and questions I had around that subject as much as possible. Overall, I found myself gravitating towards specific themes within each of the different subjects. Notably, I saw that I was mostly interested in topics of education, childhood, family, and togetherness. Though this does not bring me closer to choosing a specific topic, I found the exercise I did helpful in at least giving myself a criterion in which I can use to structure my topic and problem statement.
The topic of Chinese festivals and traditions is very personal to me. My family is ethnically Chinese and I grew up celebrating these festivals. However, I never knew why we were celebrating them, or even when. It was always bewildering to see my mom and aunts prepare for all these festivals, as there were so many components. How do they remember all of it? What does each of them mean? I think this would be a really interesting personal project to be able to document them.
I grouped “teaching about animals”, “teaching history”, and “teaching children financial responsibility” here because they all deal with basically the same theme: education. Education is definitely something I’m very interested in. How does one learn something? As a narrower field of focus, I also found myself more interested in how young children learn rather than adults. In both animals and history, I caught myself asking how learning that particular topic would benefit their lives in general. Additionally, I also thought about how children would be learning. Something I thought about in all of them is the typical way children learn now, through a screen. With the knowledge that most parents want to reduce screen time, it would be an interesting project to see if I can research a way to make learning these topics still engaging through analog means. It also occurred to me that any project with children will undoubtedly include their parents, so I would be curious to learn about how the needs of the child and the needs of the parent will be different in each particular subject.
Lastly, I had some thoughts and curiosity around the idea of dog adoption. It’s a process that is notoriously difficult (particularly in big cities) and very selective. Why is that? While I can surmise some justification, I still don’t really understand. More interesting to me than the process of adopting is what happens after you get the dog. How do dogs and humans bond? What kind of signs should an owner be looking for? As someone who just went through this process, it was nerve-wracking and anxiety-ridden. Is there something out there that can make it easier for new dog parents?