Refinement and Bees.

I think that this pitch exercise was very helpful in refining our topic because there are a lot of different directions our podcast could have taken if we did not narrow it down to a particular research question. Before the pitch, I knew the general direction I wanted to go in, with the disappearance of honeybees and Colony Collapse Disorder, but the pitch helped give this direction more focus on the causes of CCD. There are also thousands of different species of bees, so this pitch helped us learn that we wanted to talk about honeybees in particular. Furthermore, my partner and I were able to see that there is no singular cause of CCD, and so we could avoid narrowing our topic too far. I think it would be useful in other writing assignments as a pre-writing exercise to write out the specific question you are trying to answer and doing some preliminary research, because a lot of times, papers are written last minute and having this done ahead of time will give you some idea as to the amount of work you have to do before you actually start writing. It also might help encourage you to start writing earlier than you might have wanted to because you will become more invested in your topic.

Our refined show idea is to explore the many factors contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder and the disappearance of honeybee populations, as well as the possibly disastrous effects CCD might have on humanity and our current way of life. We plan on discussing the case of CCD in terms of cause and effect in order to reveal the enormity of this seemingly small situation.