Monday, October 25, 2010

Back to Square One

My "selling-out" dissertation topic was a hit amongst the people I really don't respect.  This should send me a loud signal that I need to go back to what I'm passionate about.  I feel so wishy-washy, but at least I'm being honest with myself.  I can't imagine the next three years studying women engineers.  I'm not an engineer, not once in my girlhood, adolescence, or adulthood have I even contemplated being an engineer.  Perhaps it's because I wasn't encouraged in science and math, I'm sure that was part of it, but I have no interest in being part of a man-dominated industry, nor do I think I can change it.  Lame, perhaps, but we have one lifetime to make a difference, this is not my sword to fall on.

I have to go back to teaching adults to cook, but I am breaking it down into creating curriculums for different subsets:  the cook who wants to learn more for fun and social aspects, the single mom, the abused woman (perhaps limited by a life cycle of poverty), the elderly (who may be cooking on their own for the first time), college kids, and busy executives.  I'm interested in the different motivations to learn to cook, the different instruction methods to be most effective, and lastly, the whole process of cooking, from nutrition to meal planning to budgeting to entertaining.  I think I will get some great support from a few key professors, I already know I have support of two, I just need to get the research going to prove that it is a worthwhile endeavor.

My advisor today asked me to think about several great questions, like what I want to do with my PhD, how I want to continue my research, how this will benefit me personally.  I'm journaling like crazy to find the answers to these - but they all keep coming back to cooking.  Teaching people how fulfilling and fun and empowering cooking is - and writing books along these thoughts.

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