Proposed Airport Expansion

Week 4 Lab

To Hell and Back Again,
By David Phillips
ArcGIS product:

ArcGIS software is incredibly overwhelming, at first. Approximately 55 out of the 58 pages of the tutorial were a battle. For the most part, things did not become easier as time went on. Honestly, this was one of the most trying experiences I have at college thus far. However, as things were consistently challenging, I was consistently adapting and overcoming. On a personal level, I believe adapting and learning to be closely related terms.

As a result, I do not feel comfortable working with ArcGIS software. However, I learned a great deal from the lab, and am far more comfortable now than I was before. Creating multiple maps and changing between views has helped me greatly. I now realize that when I zoom in and out, I am not destroying the map I just created. Also, I learned that the "undo" button is incredibly useful. I clicked the undo button at least fifty times. Furthermore, ArcGIS is most likely bad for my heart. In many instances, when I did not understand what was happening and thought I lost all my work, my heart stopped. Thankfully, I never actually lost all of my work. Also, I am alive, and thankful to be finished with this painfully slow, GIS assignment.

There are many seemingly unexplainable things in ArcGIS. If I continue to work with this software, I hope to develop an understanding of its inner workings. In many parts of the tutorial, I did not understand what I was doing. I was simply clicking the buttons I was told to in a specific order. I understand few parts of the system. However, I successfully completed step five of the tutorial, in which not all of the steps were spoon-fed to the user. So, I probably have a more functional knowledge than I think I do.

The most frustrating part of the process was trying to complete my project on a different computer. Even if nothing was changed, the file pathways were severed. Repairing these takes approximately half an hour, if it is possible at all. In the end, I abandoned my attempts to finish this lab at that time and returned when I could work from my original workstation. Even though the map above looks somewhat meaningless and boring to most people, it was a huge challenge to create. For that reason, I am very proud of my finished product.