Geography

Why is geography important? For me, geography is important because it gives you a sense of knowing where things around you are. We live on a huge mass of land, with rainforests, deserts, mountains, lakes, oceans, and more, yet lots of people don't even know five countries in Asia or three capitals in Europe. For me, geography is simply a life skill. If I'm going to live a long time on this planet, I want to know what's around me, where can I go next? I want to learn about different cultures, climates, biomes, and animals, and geography opens the horizon for exploring the world. Geography isn't just the ability to name all the continents or list six provinces in Europe, but geography is also being curious, and ready to explore the world, not just on foot, but also through books, documentaries, and photos. This page will be a documentation of my geographical journey around the world.

Asia And Europe Geography

During this year, I have memorized the locations of all 25 and 47 countries in Asia and Europe, as well as major bodies of water in these areas and as a fun bonus, I also learned the locations and names of some deserts and mountain ranges around the world. This is a goal I am very proud of, and in the following years, I would like to have memorized the geography of Africa, North America, and South America and have a better general geographic orientation and understanding of where important countries are. 

To learn the geography of Europe and Asia, I used an app called World Maps, which I studied twice a week. World Maps is a great app for your specific needs in learning because it has many categories to choose from, from simply learning the locations of countries, to other geographical features such as deserts, bodies of water, and mountain ranges. World Maps presents information in a way that significantly helped me improve my geographical knowledge over a short period of time. If I clicked on the wrong country, the country would light up yellow, and if I didn't click on the right country the second time, it would light up in red. This is important because it helped me understand which countries I needed to practice more in the next rounds. I also enjoyed the score feature, which allows you to use the World Maps app as more of a game, sometimes even competing with other family members along the way! In conclusion, I would definitely recommend the World Maps app to anyone looking to deepen their geographical knowledge.

A Short Thank You Note

I think it is important to treat challenging things as a game, that way you are motivated to repeat and learn subjects regularly. I am very glad that geography was more of a game, or an extra-curricular for me this year because not only was it fun, but also engaging and it helped me learn a lot. That being said, I wanted to thank my mentor in geography this year, my dad. Thank you for finding time to regularly practice geography with me, and inspire me to learn more. I enjoyed how we each went through every set of countries together as if it were a game, as well as the two projects on the karst landscape we did in Thailand. The most important thing I learned was that it's never too late to learn something new or simply refresh your old knowledge. I had lots of fun learning geography with you this year, Dad.

-Magda