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Not Your Mother's Geography
Before I begin my first blog, I want to say a big hello to everyone out there reading this. I'm very excited to be a part of this, and hope that my journal can give you a glimpse of the life of the average JMU student.
First a little about myself. Well I graduated from Fairfax High School in 2002, thus making me a junior this year,and the last couple years have honestly just flown by for me. I try to stay very active in the JMU community, sometimes I think I'm "too" active. I'm in the Honors Fraternity Phi Sigma Pi, I play Club Water Polo, I work with University Information (where I answer a multitude of questions students have), and this summer will be an Orientation Program Advisor, so I will be in the beautiful town of Harrisonburg all summer. As you can possibly tell by the outlay of this blog I am also a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) major, as well as an Environmental Information Systems minor, and now a blogger for the College of Integrated Science and Technology.
When I first heard about the opportunity to start this online journal I knew I wanted to do it. The opportunity to share my experiences, as both a GIS major as well as a student, is something that needs to be done. I know that Geography is not the most understood major. When I tell people that I am a geography major they go, "Oh yeah, What's the Capital of the Czech Republic?" and you know what, I have no clue. But in seriousness, geography is so much more different than what you learned in grade school.
At JMU there are three concentrations you can focus on in Geography; Cultural, Environmental, and GIS. In Cultural, you focus on the factors of geography and see how they have influenced the culture. Environmental geography seems pretty self-explanatory. And then there's GIS. GIS focuses on all the technology aspects that geography uses, and in my opinion is one of the most underrated majors around. Most people use GIS day to day and most likely have no idea. For example, when you watch the weather in the morning, GIS was used to help make those maps you see the weatherman point out, or when you get directions from Map Quest, GIS was used to build those maps. GIS is integrated into so much of the daily lives of people that I think they take it for granted.
I've been a GIS major for the last year, and have taken
several very interesting classes. I think as a continuing project I will tell you all about a class offered, and how it can be used in the real world, in blogs to come. What I will tell you right now though, is how much I enjoy the geography department here. I could go on and on right now, but I'm afraid I just won't have enough room.
I see our department as a closely knit group. It will happen when you only have a 100+ students in the department though. But it's not just the students that make it this way, it's also our professors. All of our professors here have spent nearly a majority of their lives becoming professional in their field of work. Dr. Gustafson has worked for the military analyzing aerial photographs, and is still hired by the Catalina Island Conservancy to work on preserving the island. Dr. Kraenzle works continuously in GIS with other companies, sometimes finding students interning positions. And Professor Shaffer, who own his own business, TerraLogic GIS, creates maps that are made accessible through the Internet.
I feel I've written quite a bit already, but I just want to say one last thing. More than anything what I love about JMU is the whole school's spirit. I really find it second to none, and it doesn't just start and end during the Football season, but lasts all year long.
Well that's all for now I suppose, talk to all of you soon.
Posted by Simeon on April 8, 2005 03:27 PM | Link | Email Simeon
