Hi, my name is Theo and I am a junior from Los Angeles majoring in PPEL with a concentration in Philosophy and trying to minor in Education and Society. I have two pit bulls back home that I absolutely love to death, and I am obsessed with analyzing myself and others with the Myers-Briggs personality types.
The reason I signed up for this class is sort of a long story. I was on my bed in my apartment late at night in Melbourne, Australia last semester when spring registration opened for me. I furiously typed in the codes for the classes I wanted and hit ‘enter’. After a two minute wait—which felt like an eternity—the page finally loaded. I didn’t get three of the five classes I needed. Naturally, I started freaking out, especially because it was mandatory for me to take one of the classes so that I could begin my minor in Education and Society. I emailed the teacher of the education course I needed and received a reply of little help, telling me to just keep an eye out for open spots in the course in January. I began looking for a random class to take at 10:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays as a placeholder for the education class in case I wasn’t able to get a spot. I began looking at geography courses because I had never taken a geography class before and I thought that it could be interesting. As I scrolled through the list of courses I came across this one that was open at the perfect time, so I decided to register on a whim. I had no idea what to expect from the title: Introduction to Maps and Geospatial Technology. The class title sounded really cool, but I was also worried that I might be in way over my head. January finally rolled around and there were still no openings in the education course, so I figured that I would go to this class and see how I liked it before asking for an override in the education course. After attending the first day of this class I was really surprised at how interested I was in the course material. I have always been interested in how maps work, so I’m really excited to actually be involved in the map making process. Not only does this course seem really cool, but it also looks quite useful in the real world (which is not as common in my philosophy courses!) The practicality along with the creativity makes this course very unique from most of my PPEL courses. I’m not really sure what to expect from this class, but I hope that it helps me with computer skills and gives me a better understanding of GIS.