I Don't Know Where Georgia Is...

For one of the projects I am working on at work, I have been tasked with grouping countries together according to their proximity to one another. As I sat at my desk entering country after country into Google Maps, I was struck by how poor my knowledge of world geography is. In my defense, I have never taken a geography class. Neither my high school nor college curriculum required it. However, I don't think this is an excuse for not knowing that Egypt is in Africa-- not Asia-- or that Japan is smaller than China. (Alright, maybe I should have said that my geography skills are EXTREMELY poor.)

As if I haven't already embarrassed myself enough with the disclosures above, I thought I'd give you another laugh at my expense. This incident is also related to world geography and occurred a few years ago when I was working as a magazine editor...

I was editing an article for the travel and leisure section, when I came across this sentence: "Our cruise ship disembarked in South Georgia for a tour of an abandoned whaling station, where we saw young elephant seals, King penguins and timid Pintail ducks." I read the sentence a few times to make sure I was understanding it correctly before deciding that I had, in fact, come across a major typo. I mean, everyone knows you can't take a cruise ship to the state of Georgia, much less see penguins running around down there, right?? (DUH!)

So, I did what any good editor would do. I waltzed into my boss's office and proudly announced that I had found the typo to end all typos. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Boss, I was reading Jim's article, and he says that he took a cruise to South Georgia. I suppose he must have been thinking about Georgia (the state) when he was writing and accidentally put it in the article. Do you want me to call and ask him where he really took a cruise to?"

Boss (with very quizzical look on his face): "Jennifer, I think he meant South Georgia."

Me: "No Boss, look at the sentence. He says that he took a cruise to South Georgia. You can't take a cruise to the state of Georgia, much less see penguins running around down there!!" (DUH!)

Boss: "Jennifer, he means the islands of South Georgia...by Antarctica..."

Me (Feeling very stupid and not wanting to make things any worse than they already are): "Oh, ok. Thanks, Boss."

I promptly exited the office of my superior (who I'm sure was feeling all the more superior after that foible), retreated to my cubicle and typed "South Georgia (country)" into Wikipedia. And there it was...South Georgia..."a British overseas territory in the Atlantic Ocean." (Incidentally, Georgia is also a country that borders Russia and the Black Sea. I wonder if you can take a cruise there too...)

If you've ever found yourself in a similarly humiliating situation, you know that there's really no way to recover from an incident like that. The only thing you can hope to do is say something reasonably intelligent the next time you are around the person you embarrassed yourself in front of. However, my point in telling you that story is this: The sooner you learn what you don't know, the better; and if you can learn to laugh at yourself for what you don't know, well, that's better yet.

Until tomorrow,
Jennifer Lynn