I am in the first half of my 6th semester studying geography. Despite my short time with the field I have a BS in geography, an undergrad certificate in geographic information sciences, and am less than one school year away from an MS in geosciences (geography concentration). This is true of most geographers, I think. Very few people start as geography majors. Most people don’t even realize geography is a major in college. The things geographers study are often also studied by other scientists, so much so that some geography departments are combined with other science departments. Here at Georgia State geography has been, at one time or another, combined with anthropology and geology.
This overlap has been further reinforced by my course work. I have never taken a geography course that didn’t have at least some students from a different discipline. Worse yet, the rapid proliferation of GIS into other fields means that most academics have some working knowledge of spatial analysis. Even my older brother, who is a religious studies major and lawyer uses GIS almost every day. All this has lead me to wonder why geographer exist at all. Why not just be a different kind of scientist who happens to study things spatially?
With the massive increase in work I’m experiencing I think I may finally know why geography is a distinct subject. With SIF, my thesis, course work, and GTU (I’m president of the geography honors society on campus) I’ve finally figured out why I took all those geography course on all those different topics. Having been forced to see any number of different subject areas in terms of how they function spatially, I have found that I now process all my information spatially. My route to school, the space in my backpack, the memory on my computer, the time in my schedule, all of it is a 3D spatial analysis problem to me. This realization has made me more efficient and less stressed. I’m not great at managing time, but I’m good at maximizing space. If the time in my schedule is simply space to be filled, I’ll fill it in the most efficient way I can. Suddenly scheduling is easy and straightforward.
This ability to see anything and everything as an issue of space was honed by learning about myriad topics all from the perspective of space. This is how geographers can contribute to sciences in unique and valuable ways. By being able to take a given set of variables, think of them spatially, and then disaggregate their effects, geographers can get at the causes of phenomenas in ways other scientists might not. Most academic geographers will take this skill and focus it on one general topic: climate, surface water, the oceans, people. This is why many geographers can be referred to by their field: climatologist, hydrologist, oceanographer, demographer.
In the end the thing that defines geography for me isn’t any one knowledge set, it’s a tool set I’ve learned. Geographers fundamentally study how we understand and interact with space. As my work this year continues to intensify, I hope to use this skill set to keep me going. Moving forward in the semester I’ll try to let you know how these skills help me contribute to the various projects I find myself working on.
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