Old Maps, New Tools: Refreshing GIS Skills with ArcGIS Pro, ArgoApps, and Google Drive
Coming back to GIS after a bit of a break felt a lot like riding a bike—you don’t exactly forget, but you do need a little warm-up before you can take off at full speed again. I’ve worked with GIS before, but starting out with ArcGIS Pro this semester was a nice refresher on the basics: settings, themes, basemaps, layers, and (my favorite) symbology.
In ArcGIS, the first thing I revisited was the settings and themes. I’d forgotten how handy it is to set up your project defaults early on. It’s the little things—like switching to dark mode or pointing ArcGIS to a specific project folder—that make everything run smoother down the road. It was a good reminder that being organized up front saves headaches later.
Then came basemaps and layers. Even though I’ve worked with them before, it was refreshing to play around with them again. Basemaps are such a simple choice, but they change the whole feel of a project—satellite imagery for detail, or a clean canvas for data-heavy maps. And layering still feels like stacking transparency sheets in grade school: every new dataset adds another dimension to the story.
And then there’s symbology, which never gets old. Adjusting colors, symbols, and classifications can completely change how data communicates. But I also had one of those “oh yeah” moments—when the required Circle 1 symbol was way too big for the map view. Instead of highlighting my data, it swallowed everything around it. It was a good reminder that sometimes defaults don’t match the scale of your project, and you’ve got to tweak things until the map tells the story you want it to.
What really was new to me, though, were the tools that wrapped around ArcGIS—ArgoApps and Google Drive. ArgoApps was a lifesaver. Instead of worrying about installations, updates, or whether my laptop had enough space, I could log in and have everything ready to go in one spot. It was a new experience for me, and honestly, it made diving back into GIS much smoother than I expected.
Google Drive, on the other hand, has been more of a learning curve. I’ll admit—it’s not my favorite. I’m used to keeping my files local and organized in a way that makes sense to me, so adjusting to Drive’s system has taken some patience. Still, I can see the value in it. Having my data backed up and accessible anywhere is handy, even if I grumble about the interface sometimes.
So, while ArcGIS Pro itself felt like a refresher, learning to integrate ArgoApps and (yes, even) Google Drive into my workflow was something new—and surprisingly empowering. It’s like I had the old GIS skills waiting in my back pocket, but now I’ve got new tools to keep me organized and efficient. It’s a good reminder that technology isn’t just about learning new tricks—it’s also about finding better ways to use the ones you already know.
