Mapping my routes across years

Across my three years at Carleton, I’ve lived in three different dorm buildings while frequenting the same places throughout my days and weeks. For example, I go to West Gym and Burton dining hall almost every day, especially in the fall when we are in season for volleyball. My walk to West has changed slightly each year so I mapped the differences in the ArcGIS map embedded below and linked it here. To do this, I used a .csv file (google sheets) where I ranked my experience living in those buildings unrelated to their location or walk time as well.

I liked the final product because although my experience living in those buildings wasn’t really related to how far I was from West or the rest of campus, the map showed that they are coorelated anyways. In general, I love maps and I think they have a lot of potential to communicate a lot of information quickly (sometimes not as quickly). In fact, I have a favorite map which I’ve hung in the hall of my current living space. Another thing I love about maps is that they don’t always need language which I think is beautiful because the reach of a map may be international-much further than other digital humanities projects. A well created map has so much potential, hence the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’

I have to say, however, that the process was very frustrating. In the long run everything behaved fine, but the process of creating layers and adding elements, etc. took me way too long. For some reason it wasn’t working in class when Austin went over the material, but then when I worked on it later it was working which just meant that it took me awhile to complete becuase I didn’t have the same in person giudance. I’m proud of my final product not olnly because I spent a lot of time on it but also becuase I think it’s a cool tool and I could see myself using this software in the future for different projects, perhaps related to geology.