Saturday, January 9, 2010

How to Irritate a Geographer

pterodactyls:

“Ooh, so you know all the capitals, right? What’s the capital of ___?”
(or)
“Hahaha that must be so easy, everything’s been mapped already! There’s nothing left to discover!”
(or)
“Oh, just like Google Earth!”

NO while we probably do know whatever capital you’re asking, our field covers everything from climatology to plate tectonics to demographics. We don’t spend four years at university practicing rote memorization.

NO everything hasn’t been mapped already. Populations are always changing, borders shifting, diseases spreading, coastlines moving. Etc. The world is changing.

NO it isn’t just like Google Earth. That’s a bunch of pictures.

“Geography? So are you going to be a teacher?”

For the record, I read Human Geography, but I could still draw a pretty sweet diagram of a glacier.