One of my existential uncertainties is the scope of research interests expressed in my application essays. It has been hard to know the right trade-off between general interests that risk being uninteresting and undeveloped versus specific interests that might be seen as flawed or outside the scope of the relevant faculty. I kind of just wanted to write, "Below I outline a specific research topic I could pursue in grad school, but really I'm not at all committed to this and would be very open to changing based on your feedback!"