Week 4: Working with ArcGIS

I inserted my images as individual maps to allow me to stagger inputting them based on when I finished with each one. This proved to be beneficial to me, because the ones I finished and uploaded during week 4 weren't able to open during week 5 when I kept working on the project. One major pitfall that I ran into while working with ArcGIS was that the source of the information in a map has to be extremely organized. If a researcher was working on their own personal computer and did not have the task of moving files around, it wouldn't be as big of a hassle, but for me, working in a lab and then saving my files to a USB, the files were unorganized and the sources were lost, resulting in empty maps. I followed as many instructions as possible, yet I still ran into a bump.
Another pitfall of ArcGIS is that each step is so complicated and going back in the case of an error is difficult. Even after going through the program multiple times for this lab, I struggled with knowing exactly what I was doing when I was following the instructions. The terminology is very complicated and it would probably take me weeks or months of using the program daily to understand the big picture of what I was working with. Given that opinion of the program, I can appreciate the complicated and extremely important tasks it can complete when used by an expert.
Geographers use ArcGIS and other GIS programs to synthesize information in an extremely beneficial way. I see how important these processes are and the complicated nature of the program itself is understandable when seeing the amount of information it can bring together in countless ways.
Without GIS programs like this, a lot of information that is used to better our communities, cities, counties and countries would be much harder to come by. The process of creating a visualization to information that is otherwise numbers and tables is so useful, and those individuals that created this program and continue to learn more though it are true visionaries.