The Island of Alaska, Part 1

I was never good at geography. I always figured I had more important things to learn about than where the hell a country, city, or state was. Due to these misconceived notions, I thought Alaska was an island until about 10 years ago.

I'm certainly not dumb. I honestly don't know many stupid people who enjoy trying to connect Loop Quantum Gravity and String Theory in their spare time. You ask me to determine the eigenvalues of a matrix than I can certainly do it for you but if you ask me to point out where Columbia is on a map and we got problems.

And just why did I think Alaska was an island? Well, posted in just about every grade school textbook I owned was a picture that looked just like this:

OR

Hawaii is an island, Puerto Rico is an island, the Virgin Islands are obviously an island, so wouldn't Alaska be an island based on the map above?

Strangely enough, I knew that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands were not actually states despite what the map above infers. I knew the 50 states, I just did not know where they were located.

Use the link below to pull up a Google Image listing of "Map of the United States" and count how many images show Alaska as an island:

Maps of the United States of America

From what I have gathered, most kids had the same maps in their textbooks but eventually they looked at a map of the whole world and realized that Alaska was connected to Canada. Perhaps other kids had better teachers than I had who explained the history of Alaska and how it came to be the 49th state. That will teach you to send your kids to expensive private schools like my parents did!

In reality, I just didn't care to pay attention to subjects such as Geography. After all, I had planets to discover and scientific theories to disprove. I'm sure you can imagine the embarrassment I felt the day someone clued me on the geographical location of Alaska and I realized I am not nearly as omniscient as I thought I was. That is a story I will share later in part 2 of "The Island of Alaska". Part 2 will be written after I have had some time to let my ego build back up.

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Note: This is probably the most embarrassing thing I have ever admitted to. It has taken me nearly 10 years to come to terms with my asininity. However, I have accepted my lack of locus skills and now I find my ignorance in the matter to be comical. Please feel free to poke fun of me all you want.