Geography in Everyday Life

Geography isn't that subject in schools where you get to look at maps. It's an actual, important study of the Earth that you participate in every day! In fact, you use (or should be using) principles of geography as you make simple decisions each day. Here are some of the ways that you use geography!

• Deciding how to drive somewhere.
• Choosing your vacation destination.
• Looking for your neighborhood Chinese restaurant.
• Watching the news, especially segments on foreign issues.
• Walking around your neighborhood.
• Finding your car.
• Wandering back to your hotel when you are on vacation.
• Looking for a park.
• Following your favorite sports team.
• Moving to another house when your current house continually floods after storms. 
• Building your shed on the flat section of your backyard rather than on the slope.

Clearly, geography has a much simpler side than just looking at maps. Each of these tasks requires, at the very least, a subconscious knowledge of geography - your spatial skills, location awareness, and the ability to compute various snippets of location information. How much of a geographer are you?!