This land is our land…

You know what’s a surefire way to show you just how geographically impaired you are? Sit yourself down with a map like this one. That’s right, it’s a completely blank outline map of the U.S. No state lines, no nothin’. Now set yourself the task of drawing in the correct borders for ALL 48 continental states, along with their names and capitals. This is the semi-insane task set before us by our history teacher.

Now, this may seem like grade school work, but when your grasp on the number of states in our country is as vague as mine was, it is a necessary intervention. So, when our teacher first told us about this assignment, he decided to have us do it right then and there to give us a contrast with our efforts after we had studied the map. Needless to say, after several moments of hemming and hawing, I tentatively drew an oval encompassing the northwest, labelled it ‘Oregon’, and laid down my pencil. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad. But that’s how I felt.

So anyway, tonight I’m trying to actually get myself into shape for this exercise, which we are performing again tomorrow morning (sans capitals; we’re working up to that =-o). I’m doing okay so far, I think… but I never realized quite how many little chunks 50 states divides the nation into! I mean, I suppose I knew that places like Nebraska and Wyoming theoretically existed, but when you realize that they are just two or three states east of you… well, that’s just weird.

I welcome anyone to try this exercise… I would be very interested to see how your un-studied attempts compare to mine. (my un-studied attempts, that is)

Oh, and on a completely different note: check it out! There is another Erin Julian in the world, and not only that, but she also has a wordpress blog. Too bad she got the domain name first. Oh well.

Posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 at 10:38 pm.
Belongs with: Silly Things.
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