Experi-month #4: Geography

“Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.” --Paul Rodriguez

Two things bother me about my public school education. The first is that I had to have a security escort in order to go to the bathroom. The second is that I have an extremely limited knowledge of geography.

Yes, I am somewhat ashamed to admit that other than being able to name all of the 50 states and locate them on a map, I am a geography idiot. If you name a country, I can probably tell you what continent it’s on… and maybe even its general location. But if you give me a map and ask me to point to that country, the odds are I have no clue. Take, for example, Switzerland. I know that it’s in Europe… most likely northern Europe (since I associate it with cold weather and lots of mountains). But I have no idea what countries it borders or anything specific like that.

So obviously, if that is the extent of my geographical knowledge of Switzerland, imagine my knowledge of the more obscure countries. Zip. Hence, I decided this would be an ideal topic for an Experi-month.

You may be wondering what prompted my interest in learning more about geography. Excellent inquiry. Answer: sprocle.com. I am on this website much more frequently than I should be. If you’ve never taken a sporcle quiz, you need to right now. But be warned that it is incredibly addicting. You can easily be on sporcle for hours without realizing it. Or is that just me?

So I was sporcling one day and I stumbled upon the geography section. I decided to try the Europe quiz. I was fairly confident in this one because I have traveled Europe more than any other continent (including North America). But I quickly realized there is a big difference between naming off European countries (which is what you have to do on the quiz) and actually knowing where they are located on a map. After I named the basics (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria, etc.), I began to struggle. Who knew that there were 47 European countries?! Sadly, I only named 26, which is barely half. The average score for that quiz is 42 countries. Ignorant American: party of one? Sad, but true.

So then to try and boost my self-esteem, I decided to try the North American geography quiz. Surely, I will do better than average on that one. It’s my home continent, after all. But no. Fail. Apparently there are 23 countries in North America! This is news to me. Those island countries in the Caribbean are super tricky. I still only managed to name 14, which is still more than half, but far below the average score. I am trying to make myself feel better by noting that people who take these quizzes could very well be topographers.

So while I do have an excellent knowledge of the states, my international geography skills are immensely lacking. This is unacceptable and must change. Thank you, Sporcle, for pointing out my insufficiencies in life.