La Salle Oddity: Maps

By Amanda Koehler
Collegian Editor
April 5, 2006

Senior Katie O’Grady has had a passion for maps since her second grade geography class.

“I would love staring at them. My teacher would be going on about something, but I’d just be staring at the maps,” said O’Grady, a social work major from Philadelphia.

O’Grady fell in love with maps because she was interested in traveling around the world.

“I think I started liking maps because I wanted to travel to places, and they were a way to look at the places before I could travel to them,” she said.

Senior Katie O'Grady thoroughly enjoys studying all kinds of maps, although
she is partial to road atlases-Photo taken by Amanda Koehler.

Since then, she has been to Mexico, Ireland, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic.

O’Grady’s favorite kinds of maps are road atlases, because she likes to look at different routes and intersections. MapQuest.com is a favorite Internet spot of hers. She also really likes globes, and has two in her bedroom on-campus.

Her mother got her into looking at maps at a young age.

“We used to sit down together and look at maps all the time. When we get a new map, we share it with each other,” she said.

But looking at maps is not a favorite pastime for all the O’Gradys.

“My sisters think my mom and I are weird,” she said.

koehlera1@lasalle.edu