Embarrassed talking to potential committee members

[vmax]

I’m in the process of forming my committee, and I’m feeling more embarrassed than ever.

Quick background: I’m a first-year PhD student in computational biology. My undergraduate research was focused on analyzing human genomics data. My current lab focuses on lipidomics in model organisms. Currently, I’m working on a short-term project to manage some existing data. This work will be finished in a few months and should be publishable, but it’s more incremental work.

When talking to potential committee members, I know that I need to clearly express my long-term research goals. That’s what I’m struggling with and am embarrassed about. As an undergraduate, I was confident in my research interests as I felt well enough versed in my research area. Now that I’m in a slightly different research area, I’m less confident. I have broad views of my interests, but I’m really feeling a lack of background knowledge in my new field. I know that I need to translate my interests to knowledge gaps in my new field and make concrete plans to get where I want to go. I’m not there yet, which embarrasses me.

How do I speak well of my research interests when I haven't made concrete plans? What professor is going to want to work with me if I don't have concrete plans?

tl;dr
What advice do you have for conveying your long-term research interests when you’re in a new field, and you haven’t fully made broad goals into concrete plans?

[PsyDuck90]

This may be a difference due to fields, but in my field, you don't ask people to be on your dissertation committee until you have passed comps and have pretty much outlined a whole dissertation project with your mentor (who is also your chair). Only then do you choose committee members who can add certain expertise related to your project. We start developing relationships with multiple faculty and think about who may be a good fit earlier on, but the actual approaching of faculty is done in the 3rd year. 

[MrT]

I know exactly how you feel- I'm in my first year in a life sciences PhD program which I'm starting 10 years after graduating from my science undergrad. In-between, I went to law school and was practicing law. I am planning to take my comps at the end of the summer (for us its a 3 day written and 1 day oral). I just had my first committee meeting in which I had to present my background and research to date as well as my plans for my future research project. It was terrifying because I really felt that I did not have adequate background knowledge in my subject area. However, what was helpful was that in the months leading up to my meeting, I set meetings with my advisor to discuss very big picture what I was thinking of doing for my PhD project. After I got the big picture direction, I went back and did some research and after discussing with my advisor what would work, we broadly discussed experiments I could do. I then went home and made a much more detailed outline which I've reviewed with her a few times until I felt I got the bearings of what would be important in my area to focus on to start filling in knowledge gaps. Going through this process in stages big picture to more narrow meeting with my advisor and discussing things as well as spending the time to really write things out (or in my case diagram as well- I like pictures) made me feel more confident. I'm slowly learning that the knowledge gaps will be there (and are expected to be there), you just have to keep moving forward in identifying them and filling them in as you go. I also have  friends in the science field and before my presentation to my committee on my research, I made sure I practiced presenting the material to them which helped me tremendously.

[zhtmahtm]

As PsyDuck90 said, there's probably differences between fields, but in my case, I also needed to form my committee in my first year, and I had to schedule my first committee meeting three months after I entered the program. At that point, I didn't even know which faculty I should approach, I didn't know what I was doing, etc. I ended up talking to two professors whose classes I took in my first semester, and they didn't even care what I would be doing. Well, they cared a bit maybe, but I just honestly told them that I've just gotten into the program and taking courses, and that I only have a general sense of which direction I want my project to move on at this point, and they were totally fine with it. Now that I've been in the program for a while, I learned that the faculty is prepared to talk to first-years who have no idea what they're doing (mostly because we're supposed to form our committees so fast), and that the first committee meeting isn't even really about research, but about how I'm getting adjusted to the graduate program. So in my experience, it has been totally okay to tell them that you have these general ideas, but you don't have specific plans yet, and that that's why you want them to be on your committee (because they're experts on those fields and can guide you to the right direction). Honestly, I think a concrete plan wouldn't come up until you're doing quals, and even after then the plan keeps on changing. And the faculty would know that this happens all the time.