I've been around academia for, well, a long time, but for some reason I never heard of graduate programs in geography until a few months ago. At the time, I thought that geography was something that you studied in grade school, so that you would remember where Uganda is on the map, in case you ever wanted to go there.
But in reality, geography is one of those hybrid social sciences that tries to get at the relationships among geographical place, environment, economics, and culture. It seeks to understand—in a general sense—how human life happens on earth and, drawing from this understanding, make practical proposals about how humans can live on earth in more sustainable ways.
People who study geography are interested in many things. The University of Iowa, for instance, has specializations in environmental studies (which blends the harder research of environmental sciences and economics and public policy), geographic information science, health, and international development.
Clark University in Massachusetts offers a broader set of offerings, including feminist geography (how the environment shapes the experiences and needs of women), global economic change, the relationship between the environment and development, urban development, political and cultural ecology (how cultures and political systems interact), and sustainability and natural resources, among other things.
I started thinking again about geography this morning, as I started to read Jeffrey Sachs's Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. Sachs works at The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Perusing the site shows geography in practice. The discipline of geography is more than finding blotches on a map; it is one of the most important, and perhaps neglected, fields today.
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It sounds like you got the basic idea of academic geography. It is actually a very vibrant and applicable field of study. I graduated with a master's in 1999 and since have used geography for a medical doctor studying prostate cancer, I worked for the US Department of Commerce as a Business Geographer. I have used GIS for political campaigns.
And since there are so few of us compared to the demand for talent, it can be a fairly lucrative industry.
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