You mean I can study the world?!

The most newsworthy happening at GCSU this week is the addition of a Geography major to the curriculum--which is pretty neat. I took the article to write for our school newspaper, the Colonnade, knowing that it's what I wanted to write about.

Sometimes in a staff meeting, you hear a slug for an article and you know in the pit of your stomach that it's the article you need to write about--no matter how boring or how depressing. (Like an article on how the school was 30 people away from breaking a Guinness World Record for the largest rock, paper, scissors tournament in the world, and how those 30 people were eating lunch at the dining hall and felt that their presence didn't count. jerks.)

So this morning I was fortunate enough to interview Dr. Doug Oetter, coordinator of the geography program. I went in reluctant of what I was going to talk about with him, because I didn't understand what a geography major does for a person or what you could do with it. It seemed useless to me--like a theater major.


But Dr. Oetter loves geography. His passion for geography is like that of Romeo and Juliet's passion for rebellion. He explained that geography is the study of the world and its citizens. His philosophy of geography is that people in the US need to learn the ways of other countries and people to make our hometowns better places to live. People's behavior will change for the better when they understand the way other parts of the world work, and become better students, better citizens.

I never realized that you can do anything with a geography degree. As Dr. Oetter says, "the skills of geography are applicable to city planning, travel, civil service, pursuing law and government positions."

It's odd how people work. For example, I never would have thought twice about taking a geography class--it didn't matter to me. But when I spoke to Dr. Oetter today, I saw geography through his eyes. The passion and excitement of learning about the world--its people, the culture, the reason and rhyme. My own imagination sparked as I thought about the world. I think I might take a geography class.