written at 7 am on January 28

I just had an epiphany. I am on the MARC train, the Baltimore-DC equivalent of the Metra, riding from Jesse's house to work. The train ride is smooth, just like the Metra, and is about the distance from Dave and Julie's to Union Station.

Anyways, my epiphany. I'm writing up an example travel brochure for my World Geography students to model their own travel brochures on. It's actually quite an interesting class. I'm basing it on the textbook, while really trying to stay out of the textbook, and the textbook emphasizes 5 "themes of geography": location of a place, character of a place, human interaction with a place, movement around a place, and the region that the place is in. So the travel brochure has to have something for all 5 themes of geography in it. And my example brochure is about, what else, Hyde Park. It is one of the two places that I am familiar enough with and like enough to write about.

So in the process of writing, I was checking to make sure that I was covering all 5 themes of geography, and thinking "oh, this has to do with movement, and human interaction…location…etc." I was writing about the grow of Hyde Park, how it was a commuter community and then the World's Fair made it a tourist attraction, and finally how the University and its community has really shaped Hyde Park.

What I realized was that in many ways, especially if defined by the 5 themes of geography, I am a geographer, as well as a social historian. I am truly fascinated with the movement of humans from rural to urban communities and their motivations for moving. Which really means that I need to take statistics classes and demography classes, as well as urban development, agrarian and hinterland development/revolution classes.

So now I have a better idea, I think, of the type programs that I'll need to look for.

Or maybe this is all just b.s.