In labs 1, 2, and 3 in this course, I have learned a handful of valuable skills using ArcGIS that I have confidence I could use for many different situations.

However, the skill I feel most proud of is my ability to comfortably manage creating polygons for a layer manually and creating a feature class. This may seem a simple job, but at first I found it very challenging conceptually in ArcGIS. However, now that I fully understand the theory of thought behind locating a correct coordinate system and attaching a layer to that coordinate system, the ‘creating a feature class’ skill seems the most valuable to me as it is so versatile. I now know how to create an entire class of polygons that I know how to build and edit, name and save, so that I can manually have control over the layers that I’m using. By learning how to create a new layer and having the responsibility to make sure it looked and behaved correctly in the program, I am now much more prepared to begin building maps myself.