A GIS Miracle

Korrin B.

February 13, 2010 - 10:00 PM

The requirements for my major in Planning, Public Policy and Management recently changed, leaving me with the daunting task of having to take Applications of Urban GIS. GIS stands for Geographical Information Systems and in the class, we learn how to use ArcGIS software in order to create meaningful maps that complement urban planning. I have never been too savvy with the whole software and technology world, but I do understand its growing importance in the job world. ArcGIS happens to be incredibly sexy right now and in high demand of planners and policy makers. The software can be used to make very detailed and specific maps about particular locations. Some of the maps we have made in our lab class so far have shown routes of access to public schools in Lane County and population densities of elderly people throughout Oregon by county.

However, as I said, technology is not really my thing. I have been doing all of my work for my GIS class and going through all of the steps, but have had a hard time getting the information to truly stick. I think it is hard to learn the software sometimes because our labs are written in such a step-by-step fashion that you end up just following it like a robot instead of stopping and thinking about why that would be the next step or challenging yourself to guess what might come next.

On Thursday, I walked into my lab class and remembered - Oh yeah, it's test day. The test was open book, but, of course, I forgot my book at home. I sat down with an impending sense of doom lurking over me. The tests were handed out and I quickly read through all of the directions, studying the test's entirety. I looked up at my computer screen, let out a sigh, furrowed my brow, bit my lip, felt my stomach drop, and whispered, "Dang..." I was pretty much convinced that I was going to leave that class with nothing to turn in.

The task was to take two shapefiles that had been placed in our computer's folders and to create a map from them. The map was to show all of the rivers and creeks in Lane County with particular ones labeled and highlighted, as well as show the Lane County urban growth boundaries. All of the steps looked so familiar, but I just could not remember for the life of me how to actually do them. I started pushing buttons and fiddling around with ArcMap, hoping that it would just come together. It didn't.

I couldn't get my layers to project properly, so I had my rivers and creeks in one spot and my urban growth boundary a few hundred miles away as if it weren't even a part of the same county. This was bad. At the end, we were to print out our map and turn it in. I had no map to print.

Then, somehow, someway, about a half hour into the class, it just started coming together. I projected my rivers and creeks layer and then got my urban growth boundary to project in the same way so that they were finally layered on top of each other as one and looked like an actual map! I remembered how to label things and change colors and make a legend and add a north arrow. It was amazing. It was as if some divine force had just reached down and touched my computer and said in a powerful, booming voice, "Let there be a map!" And there was, and it was good!

I was sweating down until the very last minute when I printed my map. I handed it into my professor, laughing. He didn't even understand the incredibly intense journey I had just gone on in the past hour and fifty minutes. I was riding high on adrenaline.

My professor handed me back my lab from the previous week - 49/50. Life was good. I printed out a second copy of my test map to confer with my friend (who happens to be an ArcGIS genius) after class. He said it looked great. I was astonished. I don't know how I did it, but I did. I made a map all on my own and it was beautiful. It was one of those GIS miracles that come every so often and make everyone's hearts flood with joy and warm fuzzies.