I have a very bad sense of direction, which is very inconvenient because my job involves being all over the place. Usually, if I don’t know where something is, I make sure to go there before my work with them actually starts, so I know how to get there and how long it takes. Otherwise I would have to leave home about two hours early on the first day, to allow for being lost.
I cannot function with a map, and I cannot function with directions like the ones above in the picture, or the ‘go left then right and after about 100 m turn left at the second traffic lights‘ type.
How I do it is by landmarks. If people just say to me ‘head towards the big blue building and it is near there’ then I can find my way. Luckily there is always something unique nearby – an unusual or big tree, a particular shop, a striking or large building, a church. Or people can just point in the general direction and I go that way.
Obviously I cannot use Google maps and I don’t use gps but I do find street view very helpful. If I can see a photo of the street, then I can orient myself by that landmark.
I have a friend who works with maps only. He needs a map to find his way anywhere. We went on a cruise together in Greece a few years ago and he got confused with his map but I was able to reorient us back to the ship after a day trip because of a big hotel that I noticed near the harbour when we arrived. Other times we have travelled I have always just relied on him and his map!
I am also (unlike many men) not afraid to ask for directions!
As someone who teaches navigation to DofE participants, I’d love to understand why you have trouble reading a map, and what happens in your brain when you look at one; I’m sure it would help me teach. I wonder if there’s a ‘dys-‘ for this; dysgraphia perhaps?
I usually tell students they already know all the navigation techniques; they just need to learn to use the techniques more formally.
Direction & distance
Landmarks (topographic)
Junction tree (topological)
Signs
I teach using the junction tree approach, breaking the route into legs between decision points (junctions or landmarks), and then how to stay on the correct path and how to find the next decision point; mostly tracking progress along the leg using the four techniques above, and looking out for, and ‘ticking off’ features we pass.
Back to the cartoon; I prefer to use direction relative to where I’ve just come from, as few people have an innate sense of NSEW, and would need a compass. Though there are environmental clues, and some people are able to keep track of direction, even after following twisty routes; my mate can, but I can’t.
That is really interesting. I am pretty good at navigating using landmarks. But maps both paper and digital baffle me. I have thought in the past that a map would work if the map was enormous and I could stand on it to orient myself. I definitely don’t cope with NSEW either. I am also not great with numbers – I wonder if that is connected?
I could go on at length… But I will just suggest the following:
Thank you SO much for this!
Oh, and a quick search does suggest dyslexia & dyscalculia are associated with difficulty reading maps; you are most certainly not alone.
It seems ‘dysgraphia’ is a difficulty with writing (and in some other fine motor skills like playing instruments); that’s probably me: my writing is terrible, and my fingers rebel when trying to to repeated operations on a musical instrument or computer keyboard…
No, thank YOU, Janet, for making me think about the difficulties some people have. It’s hard as a teacher to put yourself in the place of someone who struggles, as you can’t understand why they struggle. Being reminded that different brains work differently is always useful, even if it doesn’t immediately give either of us ‘solutions’; it does remind us to be patient, and keep trying to come up with methods that ‘click’ with the diverse brains.
It’s interesting that I am good with both the technical and organic parts of language (I speak four and can write and translate Latin), but when my boss says to me You have 8 groups and you need to cycle three teachers through all eight, with one teacher in the morning and one in the afternoon, my mind goes blank. He usually then says ‘oh and they want 48 hours but they will be 45-minute hours, not 60-minute hours and I want to walk outta there and just keep walking.
When I am given a new teaching workplace, I usually do a dummy run to find it first. I am that bad…I have wandered around for many hours trying to find a place that was right round the corner. Damn non-existent sense of direction!
This is a constant conversation in my house. I, too, am a “landmark navigator”, where my wonderful husband can look at a map once and know exactly where to go and how to get there. He is so linear that he cannot understand how I CAN’T function that way, and I’m so abstract that a map will reduce me to tears. It’s always a challenge when we’re in the car together trying to reach a destination for the first time.
LOL I just cannot read maps!!!
Sadly I have a very natural sense of direction I can navigate quite well without a map or technology! But I do tend to use Google Street View to know what places look like before going there.
I can go by with the explicit “turn right at next corner, left at next stop light, etc” but not with landmarks or directions (north, west, etc) if I’m going to someplace I’ve never been before. If I’ve been somewhere at least once, I can start navigate with landmarks (but still not directions!). 😛