Kaycey's Culture: Geography & I

Colours and scenery – My favourite colours are blue and green (not together): Blue for the sky and green for the grass (I decided that in year 6 haha). I really like a completely clear light blue sky or a purple sunset glow; and the look of fresh grass *Sigh* I love the look of nature. A favourtite thing of mine is being in nature like this or seeing sights like these.

My random walks and tree obsession

Winter

On geography trips

Hard side - I find understanding (most things in) geography 'easy' however exams really catch me out. I can't articulate well in or understand exam questions much. It sounds stupid but I wish I could just learn geography and not have to do an exam - exams are so technical and not even the best students will always do well; no matter how hard you revise or know your things, it depends on how well you do in that limited time, your ability to cope and explain things well. Maybe a lot of the time you get exam stress - the examiners can't tell this, they just have to mark you on the evidence they see on your test paper and in geography, that is what I hate. For GCSE, I got A's in my end of unit test's but a C in coursework, C in physical geography and B for human geography which left me with a C overall. I'm not sure how close to a B I was however I still would have been sad(ish) with my B. I don't think my grade could ever show how much I love geography but I guess now I have to work more on the technical side to succeed.

What I want to do - I want to work in tourism or something to do with human geography and places abroad. I've looked at the outline of some human geography and tourism courses where you can do a year abroad. I'd love to live in Spain for a year and practice the language - I think that's the only way I can 'achieve fluency'. I really do want to travel and if you have a job where you can do that, all the better. Being an air-hostess would be nice as I'm not afraid of planes really (of course they can crash but the chances of that is small) I never feel ill when traveling and I do want a job where I can help people...and (nowadays) see the world; but I couldn't be a stewardess for my whole life.

Why I like it - I'm still not 100% on giving an answer on why I love Geography so much. I really like looking at nature and learning about how things are formed in nature. I like looking at atlases and globes and finding out about countries and tourism.

Walking – For some reason I extremely love walking (I think it happened that Summer I wanted to loose weight but was to lazy to do actual exercise of another kind). It started off with my fortnightly walks for about two hours around the hilly places in my area. Now I walk whenever I get the chance like walking home and enjoy walks on geography trips (the Lake District was a fun walk; looking at mountains

A presentation I think I presented to my class in year 10.

Places I’ve been - I've been on various geography trips: The North Downs, the school field (I wonder if my class remembers that time we had a geography trip to the school field -_-), the Lake District, the Isle of Sheppey twice now. I enjoyed the Lake district the most and I speak of that trip it the holidays page.

Atlas – Believe it; along with other odd nicknames like ‘Mum’, ‘Grandma’ ‘K-Key’ ‘weirdo’ – one of my nicknames is Atlas. I think the think I like most about geography is the atlas.

I love learning little things about countries and am really competitive with myself to learn where things are on the map. It started a Church holiday in Devon, when I was 7 years olds and there was an auction and my Dad won a globe for me. I’ve never known the price of it but it’s one of my valued possessions. I used to look at the globe in the evenings and got used to the location of countries.

My mother also bought me a computer game ‘Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego’ from the TV show and I enjoyed it so much. You’d virtually go to places in the world to try and catch a thief who stole a monument surprisingly; other languages were involved at basic level.

Summer of 2010 I learnt the names of the 50 states of America along with my sister because of the ’50 states in 10 minutes’ quiz on the website ‘Ironic sans’. I think my record was 06:50 seconds remaining, something like that. This then lead me to learn the position of each state in the USA and maybe learnt a random fact about each one or the name of one city. (I even asked an American if he knows all the 50 states; he said he struggles to remember 10).

One lesson in geography, my friends realised that I knew a lot about where places were in the world and the decided to test me. I got every place they threw at me in seconds and even argued about Zaire being a country (it is a country…well the past name of a country). I can remember my friend Alexia saying ‘You’re such an Atlas’ something along the lines of that.

There was even one time I argued with my English teacher and a girl in my class about where Ohio was because ‘I know it’s North slightly Eastern of the United States…near Canada…near lake Michigan…not south…like Texas.’ The point of the argument was my teacher was putting on a Southern accent as he read a poem. I pointed this out and asked why he had that accent. He said because they persona is from Ohio -_- I said ‘that’s in the North’ and described it's location. A girl in my class even agreed with him saying it's really near to Texas.

So one skill I class useless my teacher classes useful. I told him ‘the only thing I’m good at in geography, is knowing where countries are on the map’ and he absolutely repelled this saying because I know where countries are I know the geographical situation which is helpful for questions on papers. There was one question paper where I had to describe where the Philippines is and why it is a hazard hotspot. Also, my teacher embarrasses me by whenever we’re in lesson and a country comes up in the textbook, he makes me point to the country and says ‘see! It’s not useless!’

So that’s what I like. The only downside is when someone doesn’t know for example ‘London is South of Birmingham’ or ‘Jamaica is not near to Africa. It is the other side of the Atlantic…in the Caribbean…near the USA’ you find yourself really irritated trying to push geographical facts down their throat. This is not me boasting – this is really what I feel like I’m only specially good at.

Random recall - I'm sure most of us can just recall random facts. I remember a lot of random facts about geography mainly because of did-you-know . I find facts on that blog really interesting however I struggle to remember it word for word so whenever I tell someone, I spend a long time telling them to wait for me to remember it properly. One geography lesson, I was telling my teacher a fact about Japan and why they have to be peaceful so I was telling my teacher to wait for me to remember so I looked on did-you-know for the fact they posted earlier that week whilst he started putting glue sticks on the table. I eventually found the fact about how Japan can't carry nuclear weapons or bring war to anyone (see I still can't remember it properly). My teacher asked me what do I think the glue sticks represent. I said 'Urm is it like cities in the world?' He shook his head. He asked me 'does the distribution look bad or good' and I replied 'well it looks REALLY random to me but I don't think it's...bad'.

He asked me one more time what I think they represent. I had no answer so he replied 'it's you!' I was flabbergasted and took a picture (above) of it. He explained how each glue stick are my random thoughts. I have a lot of geographical knowledge but I need to use it wisely and properly (e.g. like when answering exam questions) and said he wants my thoughts to be more like picture below. (If you can't see. The glue sticks that represent my thoughts are in a straight line). I guess it's a good goal to get a B or above.