0 - Gee Whiz, It's Geography!

Last year when I was a freshman, I heard of several people talking about their genius hour projects, and I was extremely intrigued about this idea.  But when this project was introduced a few weeks ago, I had no idea what I wanted to do.  At first, I looked for things I spent lots of time on.  That included playing Civilisation II.  Well obviously they wouldn’t let me do that for my project, but I already had a plan of how to work my way around that.

You see, Civilisation II is an extremely complex game – never mind it’s from 1996 – with many real-life concepts to think of.  I think I liked this game so much because it was related to the passion I will soon talk type to you about.  Anyway, I thought I could devise a lesson using Civilisation II to teach social studies.  But then I realised that the Teddy Bear talk was limited to just five minutes, and I could easily talk for a whole hour about Civilisation II, especially if it’s relating the game to social studies. 

Rats, that was a really good idea, but it had to be tossed.  Then I moved on to another idea.  A few years ago I had started a novel, when I still had free time, but I never got around to finishing – or barely starting at all, for I was just at 2000 words.  Well, that seemed too cliché, so that idea was tossed.  I also had considered doing a stand-up routine for the presentation, but the presentation is not a performance, but rather just talks about what I did.  Yuck.  Well, besides, I have stage fright and I don’t feel like overcoming that fear.  But finally, after much deliberation, I found my true calling that was certainly related to my original idea:

GEOGRAPHY!  It sounds nerdy, especially because I can just stare at maps and find joy in them.  However, this is one of very few interests that has endured.  From our subscription to National Geographic, we have lots of maps in our house – got to love those posters!  We also have two atlases, one really old Chinese one that was printed before India had a billion people, and a Reader’s Digest Children’s Atlas of the World.  The former I looked at before I could read, and that was how I developed an interest in maps.  In elementary school, when I could read, Mother bought me the Children’s Atlas, and I credit that single book for developing my deep interest in geography.  By middle school, I had taken stabs at drawing my own maps and was a two time runner up in the entire school’s geography bee.  I still can’t forgive myself for answering those questions wrong. 

 

So for my project, I’m going into geography.  But specifically, I’m going to work on an atlas of my own, with my own hand-drawn maps, and original synthesised information about all parts of the world.  Supposedly it’s going to be concise, but it probably will go on for dozens of pages, which would make it definitely the longest thing I’ve ever written - I haven’t yet broken the 3000 word mark, but I should be able to with this.  And finally, this atlas should achieve my larger purpose.  While I certainly enjoy yelling at the television and going ecstatic when I answer a geography question in Jeopardy correctly, I can’t help but notice that geography is often undervalued as just trivia that makes someone seem smart.

 

Where is SICILY?

Geography is much more than trivia.  It’s a core social science that enables those who are literate in the subject to be intelligent world citizens.  You won’t believe how terrible people are at what I consider basic geography, and that is attributed to the fact that geography is a severely under-taught subject.  If schools like ours won’t teach geography for whatever reason (and any is unacceptable), then the next best thing is to make atlases so people can learn themselves.  And if they choose not to, it’s their own ruddy loss.
Edit:  Originally I had wanted to make an atlas of the entire world, but that is not feasible on account of time restraints.  Therefore, my atlas has been narrowed down to just Pennsylvania.  The atlas will be divided into two equally important parts:  One that deals with the physical geography (natural features such as rivers, mountains, &c.) of the state and the other dealing with the political/human (artificial features such as political borders and cities, &c.) features.  Fortunately, because making this atlas is the bulk of my project, it will clearly represent how much I've done in the project and how much more I need to do.  Therefore, by the middle of the project, I should have completed one part.  However, time at the beginning and at the end will be devoted to planning the atlas and preparing a presentation.

Commented on the blogs of:  Josh Chu, Trevor Bert, and Felicia Krauss