‘So you make maps?’

Sarah Josephson, UNT Geography Alum, Current M.S. Student

99 percent of the time this is the response I receive after telling someone that I study geography.  Understandably, high school geography (often taught by an athletics coach) typically does not leave individuals well informed or motivated about career opportunities in the field. 

I rediscovered geography through an intrigue in environmental science during my second semester at UNT.  Specifically, physical geography captivated my interest because it provided an opportunity to observe ecosystems on grand scales of deep time (historical geology) and it offered an opportunity to study climatic change.  I had always enjoyed learning, but it was not until I found my niche in geography that I truly knew what it was to have a passion for learning.  While I feel I am inherently a geographer, my passion for the field would not have evolved the same without the team of faculty pushing me to my limits.  Through the capstone courses at UNT, I was introduced to what it meant to research a topic and concisely communicate information. From that point, I was hooked and knew my learning would not end with a bachelor’s degree.  

When I considered where to continue my education in a master’s program, I could not shake UNT from my mind.  I was tormented by the idea that diversity in learning would only come from attending a different university, yet UNT geography is where I wanted to be.  In my great mental debate, the question: ‘Is there still something to be learned from the faculty here?’ was posed to me.  I knew that I had only scratched the surface of what I could gain and achieve through my mean green mentors, and I eagerly joined UNT’s Applied Geography Master’s Program.  Only five weeks into my master’s, there is no doubt in my mind that I am exactly where I need to be in order to develop the necessary skills for continuing deeper into the application of geography in ecology. I anticipate each day’s new opportunities for learning, and I owe thanks to the department for fostering excitement in my education.

Found: Geography Major

Owen Wilson-Chavez

UNT Geography, B.S., current Master's student

I know far too many people who have graduated with a bachelor’s degree in a field completely unrelated to what they have ended up doing. One of my friends got her B.A. in Political Science only to land a job at a sales company. She gets paid well, but what was the point of getting the degree in political science? Everyone I know in this situation seems to have gone to college to earn a degree so they can get a job. These days it seems that it’s the odd person, which I consider myself to be, who comes to college to learn. I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do with my life when I arrived at UNT. I knew that I liked international politics and that I might like to work for an NGO so I pursued a degree in International Studies. At that time the International Studies department was small. There were no International Studies courses, only an interdisciplinary list of approved courses that covered the different concentrations. It was a little disheartening, but if it hadn’t been that way I might never have explored other options and arrived where I am today.

I didn’t intend to pursue the International Studies degree after my first semester at UNT. I had taken a class in anthropology that I enjoyed and decided to change my direction. I got bored with it though. Wading through the universities core curriculum left me unmotivated, and I wasn’t as excited about anthropology after a semester or two. I had, however, taken a class in geography in that time (World Regional Geography with Dr. Lyons). I don’t think I ever missed a class. I showed up every day and absorbed the material. I can’t remember any other class that I actually read for at that point in my college career. I had finally found something that really excited me. It took me awhile after that to actually change my major to geography. I took a few more of the introductory courses before then and didn’t get bored. I found out pretty quickly that Human Geography was more interesting to me than Physical Geography, but I also found out that that’s OK. When I started taking more and more classes in geography I began to enjoy going to class, I didn’t even care what the class was (my interests were pretty broad).

The department itself was different, and I liked it. International Studies was very small, but you never managed to know who else shared your major when you didn’t have a set of classes. Anthropology was large, and I never seemed to have more than one or two people in a multiple classes. Geography was small, and we all took the same classes. I remember going from Economic Geography (Dr. Lyons) to Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa (Dr. Oppong) with a large number of the same people. The next semester several of those same people were in more of my classes. It helped to create and foster friendships with my colleagues. I went from taking classes with a friend here and there to taking classes with friends and acquaintances. It’s something I don’t hear about a lot. There are departments like ours in that regard (Art, Music, and RTVF come to mind), but in my experience it’s the exception.

Having friends in your classes makes the classes themselves easier to tackle, and when you take a class like Quantitative Methods or the Capstone course you want friends to help push you along. I remember hearing horror stories about Quantitative Methods from other students, and I was more than a little intimidated by the course when it first started. I had had classes with most of the people that took it with me, and when we were told to form study groups it felt natural to make one with people I was familiar with. We all helped each other out that semester. We usually got together more than once a week to go over notes and help each other figure out the material; it worked well. When we moved on to the Capstone course we were already used to getting together, so we kept it going. I’m not sure if any of us would have been able to feel as confident with our work in that course if we hadn’t all stayed together and helped each other out that semester.  Those bonds helped us through other classes too, but anyone who reads this as a geography undergrad at UNT should know that forming friendships with your classmates can help you out just as much as showing up to class and studying.

When I was nearing the end of my degree I started really thinking about graduate school. I knew I wanted to continue my education in geography, and UNT felt like the perfect place to do it at. The department was right up my alley. Every professor I had at least seemed passionate about what they were teaching, which makes the learning environment that much better. Dr. Pan’s enthusiasm in Fluvial Geomorphology kept me going even though the material was well over my head, and I made it through having learned material that an inattentive, bored professor would have never gotten into my head. Dr. Wolverton managed to help me understand statistical analysis years after I’d sworn off any ability to understand statistics.  I could easily keep going with an example from every professor I had as an undergraduate, and that played a part in deciding to remain at UNT for my Master’s degree.

I feel that my time as a geography undergrad helped me out greatly. I definitely learned the necessity of working with others, not just to help understand classes but to actually make friends with a variety of people. The work in my courses prepared me for work in the real world, and if I was inclined to do so I feel that I would have had no problem in using my degree to get a job in almost any field where a geographic perspective is needed. Of course, more than anything, it cultivated my passion for geography and the desire to continue my geographic education at a higher level.

UNT GeogBlog: Stay Connected, Tell Your Story

Steve Wolverton & Murray Rice, UNT Geography

It is a fairly routine part of each of our days to hear encouraging stories about what students and alums have gotten out of their time at UNT in our Geography programs.  Often, we hear from someone in “the workplace” that the skills they learned and the enthusiasm for Geography that they generated in their time here has influenced them profoundly.  We want to chronicle these stories in a more permanent and accessible fashion, so that others can benefit from the telling.  So, we have started this blog, and we invite alumni to participate.  Whether or not you graduated with a Bachelor’s or a Master’s; if you would like to convey your anecdotes to the next generation, please send us a short essay.  These may consist of personal experiences, tips for current students, descriptions of what jobs “in the real world” entail, et cetera.

The first series of essays, such as the one by Owen Wilson-Chavez that follows this post, are those we invited.  We simply grabbed alums in the hallway (because a few of our recent undergraduate students have been accepted to our graduate program) and asked them to participate.  The goal of this blog, we said, is to link experiences across time and space (how geographic of us!), transcending the graduation barrier, providing opportunities for a growing community.

Ultimately, however, there is a more important goal of this blog.  Current students need to hear about “what can be done with a Geography degree.”  This is one more way to show them.  It may or may not be transparent that the UNT Geography Faculty is constantly working at improving the quality of the program, while simultaneously serving a growing community of majors.  But those are our goals.

Tell us about your experience.  Send us an essay on your current whereabouts, covering how UNT Geography has influenced your career.