Freshman’s Geography Knowledge Grows After First Week Outside Local Town

This article originally appeared in The Mugdown’s Fall 2020 print edition. To view a digital copy of the print edition, click here.

As freshman Beau Kritter left his small town for the first time this August, his knowledge of cities other than his hometown has climbed exponentially. No longer is he surrounded by the same few thousand people he grew up with. Instead, he is now enveloped by a diverse world of people who look, speak, and act nothing like his seven childhood friends.

“When I first walked into my dorm, my roommate said he was from Temple, Texas, and I was so confused,” Kritter said. “It struck me that I have no idea where anything is other than Houston, Austin, and Dallas.”

While the initial shock of meeting people from other cities was huge, Kritter was soon regularly meeting people from places he’d never heard of. “Anytime someone introduced themself, I would have to ask where the place they were from was located. It just never occurred to me that there were so many cities in Texas.”

Over the last week, Kritter has made friends with people from Abilene, Laredo, and Round Rock — all places he had never heard of before coming to A&M. This jump in his Texan geography knowledge can be credited to the mass amounts of people he spoke to in his classes, informationals, and campus events. He is still reportedly figuring out how many Houston suburbs there are.

While significant progress has been made in Kritter’s in-state geography, it remains uncertain how he will respond when he meets his first out-of-state student.

— Hannibal Lechner