mamamoonglow

Hello All! I'm new here. I'll jump in in a meaningful way, I promise. I just have to get this off my chest. As background: I'm an HDFS master's student at Kent State. I am also a professional lactation counselor. I'm a mom to 4 kids and we relocated 1000 miles so I could attend this program. I'm also a graduate assistant in my program. I'm having a crisis of interest just one semester into my program. What I intended to study is proving to be a challenge. There just isn't any good research, and lots of derision. I feel unfocused, which I'm being told is how I should be feeling right now, but for me this is anxiety causing, not freeing. I did a presentation in one class this week that was a total charlie foxtrot. The information was totally irrelevant and way above the heads of the majority of undergrads subjected to my presentation. I reduced the info to a broad overview of my topic (early attachment, specifically the magical hour of skin to skin contact) but got nailed in grading because of it. I got a B, which isn't any serious issue, but my professor was "disappointed" and "worried" and wants to meet to go over "appropriate graduate level presentations", as if that one presentation, on the last day of class, in a room that was about 80 degrees, presented to a group of individuals who were more concerned about whether they would get to go home early, is representative of my grasp of the topic. Add that this professor, in my opinion, has been at this too long and spent half the class period (I was the first of 4 30-minute long presentations) trying not to fall asleep herself, and I'm struggling to process and formulate a plan. I don't need help on graduate presentations. I need a ding-dang focus! This professor is my advisor, who is also my GA supervisor. This is blurring of roles is really affecting our many relationships. She's friendly and nice, but seems to be a bit "done" with academia. She's older and probably considering retirement. If she isn't she probably should be. I struggle to interact with the undergrads. My oldest child is just a few years younger than some of them. My presentation was excellent. It really was, but she says it wasn't "meaty" enough. It was plenty informative to undergrads. I had 2 students stop after class to ask me more about my topic. General interest! Isn't that the point of graduate presentations of a topic? I related it to the class, didn't bother to go over all of the theory and stuff the professor had ALREADY done. But I got dinged on the grade. Bleh. I need a good focus. I need a thesis/project topic I can live with, that will be interesting to students who are not professionals in the field of infant feeding, that won't limit future research to such a limited topic, but that meets the "you should already sound like an expert" guidelines of this professor. I'll be working with her for 2 more years. I need to find happy medium.