The Student Room Group

is geography easy or hard

hi how do you guys find it, and what other A-levels are you doing. by rule of thumb is it true that sciency people find A-level geography harder than they find other subjects?

i'm finding A2 geog harder and more time-consuming than further maths and physics combined! how do you geography genius' cope...care to share a few geog secrets?


phil

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Reply 1
I do economics maths geog, find geog probs the hardest this year! AS was relatively easier though.
Reply 2
I dont think its a case of easy or hard as such; Your obviously finding physics and maths easier than geo and i salute you cos i found them awful when i did them but i think its just cos i wasnt in the rite state of mind and they didnt come naturally to me, whereas geo always has since i was ickle :rolleyes:

Having done maths, physics geo and chem AS, i found geography the easiest. Having said that i found the other three really tough going for a number of different factors. Having now left school and done my own reading on stuff in my own time Id do alot better in them! :biggrin:

But id class myself more as a geographer than a sciencie person cos u have a different state of mind going into them. Obv with maths there is a definate right answer to questions, same with physics (expcept the odd question or 2) but with geography there is alot more scope, and its descriptive rather than working through a problem till the end essentially, more factors to consider i guess

Does that make sense?! lol :redface: (its still early for me hehe) and im sure there are plenty of geographers that are here to help if you need it :smile:
Geography is challenging. It combines both the art and science subjects, so you need both skills to succeed. It's suitable for "all-rounders"
I love geography :biggrin:

A2 geography is fairly interesting, apart from coasts and water supply (might be the fact they're taught by the same teacher)! I'm also doing sociology and biology - I chose sociology because I noticed bits of geography in it (haha) and biology because there's also bits of geog in that!
is it true that sciency people find A-level geography harder than they find other subjects?
I find geography 4 million times easier than biology. Biology is what I spend my life doing, whereas the other two subjects I don't seem to do any work for out of lessons really (well we get essays but the stuff sinks in quickly so I don't have to spend ages trying to learn it). Biology shoudl die!!

I've never really 'got' geography and what it takes to be good at it because I've always found it easy! I don't even notice this but my teacher said that I answer things in a very geographical way and pick up new concepts easily etc etc. There are no geog 'secrets' as far as I know - just learn the stuff. :redface:
Reply 5
I did A Level geog, maths and chem. Of the three I found chemistry and maths hardest because it was so much fact learning. In comparison geography was more about knowing theories and being able to apply them to different situations. For degree (obviously I only do geography now!) I'm finding geography completely different and challenging, but fun at the same time!
Tell me about degree-level geog, Tim! :smile:
Reply 7
geography is probably my easiest subject, probably cos i'm so good at it :biggrin:
Reply 8
Yeh what geography i do at uni is alot different to AS/A2
Reply 9
Id say that the course of geography is much more challenging than maths (especially the new core syllabus) because geography has an unlimmited stack of case studies you do for every topic whilst maths is well just maths.. you got a syllabus you get past Qs and you learn, simple.. but i would not say the actual geog exam is any harder to get an A on than lets say maths or physics.. i find history much more challenging than geog or any of the sciences!!
Reply 10
m66
Id say that the course of geography is much more challenging than maths (especially the new core syllabus) because geography has an unlimmited stack of case studies you do for every topic whilst maths is well just maths.. you got a syllabus you get past Qs and you learn, simple.. but i would not say the actual geog exam is any harder to get an A on than lets say maths or physics.. i find history much more challenging than geog or any of the sciences!!


i dont agree with that to an extent; i found maths and physics alot more challanging cos it just didnt come naturally to me, so i had ot work at it, whereas geo was just... geography!
Reply 11
LemonLime
i dont agree with that to an extent; i found maths and physics alot more challanging cos it just didnt come naturally to me, so i had ot work at it, whereas geo was just... geography!


i suppose but a lot of the things underlying physical geography is actually physics for example meteorology, tectonics, so if you had a grea tunderstanding of geog then i think you should have a basic knowledge of Physics.. and i think maths can be challenging at first, and really it just needs expalining, so if you have a rubbish teacher like me, you have to teach yourself, but remember when you worked through your maths textbook you hated the topic you were doing at the moment and found it hard, but the minute you finished it and moved onto a new one, you wish you were back on the previous topic and say it was easy.. once you get that basic understanding of maths, its really not that hard.. and deep down i probably agree with you about geography, i myself find it easier and is why im doing at uni + most interesting and relevant subject in the world!!
Reply 12
Very true; if only all of A level physics was plate tectonics :biggrin:
Reply 13
yep, i only liked the geography part of pysics.. electricity sent me to sleep
Reply 14
plate tectonics stopped in about yr 9 for me, the only thing that really interested me after that was astrophysics
Reply 15
Geog is a bizillion times harder than Psychology, and harder than English too I think. Bloody soils.
Soils *laughs* I don't have to do that rubbish, heh. The only soil I have to know about is the tropical rainforest soil. :p:
Reply 17
i dont think i did much on soil either, just a bit on a field trip
Reply 18
GO SOIL!!

GO SOIL!! *shouts for char* :biggrin:

i wanna do more on plate tectonics and volcanoes...i wanna be like pierce brosnan in dantes peak :wink: :biggrin:
Reply 19
-Sian-
Tell me about degree-level geog, Tim! :smile:


Well it seems to me that human and physical geography are each completely different at degree to A level. At A level human was about urbanisation, globalisation and things like that wheras now its about social geography (eg, how geographers see ideas of people identity) and historical aspects to geography. Although things like economic geography still exist rather than studying globalisation, you study how people see globalisation and think about whether globalisation exists or is just a myth.

Physical geography has become a lot more scientific. Theres more chemistry and stuff to it (if that makes sense).

I picked human gpy for degree, but this year it seems to have turned into sociology so I shall probably be changing to physical gpy next year!