This exercise is meant to help you in exploring your larger areas of interest and listing all of the different elements that fall within it, in order to start identifying more refined topics that you might be interested in pursuing (while at the same time bringing to light things you DO NOT care so much about).
If you are still debating among different areas and topics, please run through the exercise multiple times so you can think through all the different ideas while trying to focus on understanding which one you are most passionate and curious about, based on your personal experience, knowledge, capabilities and access.
If you have identified a larger area, you can iterate on this exercise in order to really delve deeper into the space and map out all of the topics within it that you might want to pursue, paying close attention to their relationships, themes that might cut across a few of them, connections etc.
STEP 1 – Mind Mapping
Throw your area/topic on the page. Start with the central theme and branch out from there with all the different aspects/subtopics/concepts that relate to that larger space. Everyone’s mind map is going to be different because it speaks about what you know, what you don’t know about a topic, what you see and the angle you are approaching your area from. The mind map can help you understand your unique point of view on a subject. Think about what looks important to you, and how the different elements relate. Think about hierarchies, dependencies, links. It is kind of like finger painting with words. And it is very important that as you look at your ideas you ask yourself “how interested am i in this specific aspect?” “why am i interested in this?” “what do I need to know about this?”
Mind mapping is an iterative process as it should help your thinking shift and evolve and you should take multiple passes to reflect those changes.
This quick video has some great tips on how to get started building a Concept Map.
STEP 2 – Wheel and Spoke
After you have mapped out your area, please draw a wheel/central bubble with 8 spokes. Start by putting your Area or Topic in the middle and filling in the spokes by writing a question for each. What questions do you have about this topic? What answers do you need to look for first in order to better understand the space? What don’t you know? After you have filled the first spokes analyze your questions.
What do you think is the most interesting question up here? Is there a relationship between those? Is there anything that you would cross out and think that is boring? Are there questions that you cannot wait to research and answer?
There should be follow up questions to those initial questions, so feel free to keep adding to the spokes in order to get into more depth in your questioning and thinking about the specific area or topic.
Bring your questions to class.
STEP 3 – Word
Try and fill this out:
My Area is ______________
My Topic is _____________
If I could condense my thinking so far into 1 word it would be: _______________