The Search for a Thesis Topic

I had a meeting with Ailsa, my probable thesis supervisor, last Thursday afternoon.  My tentative idea at the time was identity-impacting events in young musicians' lives.  If only I were doing this project over the winter instead of over the summer, I would have the PERFECT setup via All-District and All-State Band and Orchestra auditions in NC.  So we spent the majority of the meeting trying to brainstorm stuff happening over the summer that might lend itself to this idea, and which might not end up being a logistical nightmare.  I left the meeting with more new questions than answers, which is pretty much par for the course.

Last night was my first Research Process class, and within the first 25 minutes of it I decided that I need to bin that idea and do something else.  Because, the thing is, I'm not all that interested in identity-impacting events.  I let time get away from me and essentially ended up picking something from the available advisors' research interests at random, because I needed to have that first meeting last week per the thesis timetable.  And with that idea, I'm trying to mold my interests to fit their ideas, rather than pursuing my own.

SO.  I've decided that what I want to do instead is something with talent development.  I got really, really interested in talent development during my Planning class last term.  Did my assessment on it and everything, and wasn't sick of it by the end.  In particular, I'm interested in the question, "What is appropriate development in the context of music performance?"  There's lots of talk about appropriate development in young athletes, but a lot of that literature doesn't really translate to young music performers.  My idea at the moment is to interview as many musicians as I can, both from my own acquaintance and through various contacts, about their early music experiences, and then do a qualitative analysis to see what themes about early musical development get thrown up.

This is SO MUCH more relevant to my interests than the other idea, and would also be much less of a logistical headache because I wouldn't be working with high school students and therefore wouldn't need to obtain consent from God-knows-how-many participants' parents.  Now I just have to hope that Ailsa won't be super-annoyed about this complete 180 I'm taking, and will still be willing/able to be my supervisor, since I don't know whether talent development falls under her interests/expertise or not.  I imagine I can't be the first person who's completely switched ideas during the thesis process, surely.  And surely it's much better to be having this realization now, rather than in April, or heaven forbid, in June.

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Coming attractions: What I've been up to during the last week and a half, aside from trying to find a thesis topic!

Cheers, y'all.