jake
What type of things do Geography majors do?
i dont know what i want to major in and geography sounded interesting #college-majors #geography
2 answers
Sharon Tan
Sharon’s Answer
This means you could learn about how people relate to their local economies or the details of the culture of a specific group of people within an area. Sometimes you'd also take classes in related areas to get a more full picture of something (law, geology, public policy, planning).
You could go into urban or rural planning, become a mapmaker, go into public policy or law and help make decisions to improve people's lives in your city or state, or work in a specific area for the local city or state if that's interesting to you.
I majored in geography and took geology classes (like sedimentary rocks and learned how to read topology maps), regional classes (geography of Latin America) and classes like Conservation to better learn about how people interact with the environment. I chose to focus on GIS, which you can think of as creating maps with computer software instead of on paper. You can think of it as learning how to represent real-life places and objects using computer software so that things are trackable, recordable, and easily updated. You can also do calculations with GIS for planning or analyzing to solve a problem.
I worked as a GIS analyst for a pipeline company and helped them move all of their paper maps online and put in information all about their pipeline so it was more easily accessible online instead of having to manually look for each pipeline's information in record books. The great thing about exploring a major is that you get to learn about interesting things, and you also learn skills on the job that can help you pursue what you want to do next!
Sharon recommends the following next steps:
Cathleen Crane
Cathleen’s Answer
It's good to think of employment avenues for potential areas of study. I don't have a geography background but I can tell you how I've collected the same information for other fields:
• College websites reference potential fields and jobs in those fields along with the curriculum information on their degree programs. You can find that by searching degree requirements and program descriptions on different college websites.
• Search job boards such as www.indeed.com, www.glassdoor.com,, www.monster.com, and enter geography, geography major, or the job titles you find on college sites, in your search criteria. That should return a variety of job postings and job requirements which you can read to gauge your interest.
• Google 'jobs for geography majors'. The results may point you to specialty job boards specifically for related fields.
To build on these broad research ideas, it is also helpful to consider what other interests you have, or what will be in demand in the job market after you graduate. Many areas of study can intersect with technology, for example, resulting in careers you may not be familiar with.
The field of GIS was unknown to me, but I have read about it in articles about growing job fields, so I just looked it up. This site has great information: http://www.esri.com/what-is-gis/jobs.
Through research, conversations with advisors, and even with people working in an area you are considering, you should get good information to help you decide.
All the best!