CommunityData:General examinations motivating questions

These are a set of questions that Jennifer Turns (Professor of Human-centered Design & Engineering at UW) asks her students to answer as they begin to plan their general examinations. She calls it a "general exam précis."

I think this works best if folks provide least 2-3 answers to each of these questions (more is fine) to the following prompts:

1. Over time, I have become interested in questions such such as...
2. How have I come to be interested in questions like these?
3. What conceptual ideas are key to understanding and answering these questions?
4. Why might these questions be interesting to someone other than me? What scholarly conversations do these questions connect to?
5. How might these questions be answered?
6. What is tricky about answering these questions?
7. What are the implications for my general exam, in terms of readings with regard to theory, methods, and concentration?
8. What would I really like to gain from the general exam?
9. Who might you include on your dream committee? They can be at your institution or elsewhere. Don't limit yourself to "realistic" options. Name anybody you think would be awesome, living or dead!