Marty Partoll is a geography whiz-kid. He can tell you anything you want to know about geography: the capitol of Iceland, the locations of various physical features across the world and human geography, though he’ll admit that his knowledge of human history isn’t nearly as good as his brother’s.
His interests served him well when he recently moved on to the qualifying rounds in the National Geography Bee.
Marty, according to his mom Caroline Partoll, has always been interested in geography, though he’s quick to admit that he really discovered a passion for the subject when she got him hooked on the reality TV show The Amazing Race [1].
“I really like to travel and visit new places, and I like seeing all the different places and cultures that they go through [on the show],” Marty says. “I like learning about the different cities and states, and it may sound really religious, but I like to learn about world religions, too. I really like to learn about all of them, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.”
Marty beat out all the fourth-through-eighth-grade students at Maple Grove’s Cedarcrest Academy [2] to move on to the qualifying round. He’s participated in the geography bee for the past three years.
“We were relieved that he won instead of waiting to get to eighth grade because it’s something he’s always wanted to do,” Caroline Partoll explains. “It would be kind of cool to go to regional’s too because there are only a couple of kids in the history of the school that have.”
Thousands of schools across the country participate in The National Geography Bee annually. The preliminary rounds happen in November, December, and January. In the qualifying rounds, participants are expected to take a writing-based test and at the time of this interview, Marty had just taken the test.
“I don’t have the results yet, but I knew almost all of the answers to the questions on the test,” Marty said excitedly.
The results of the qualifiers will be revealed after Jan. 31. The final round of the competition takes place in Washington D.C. where the participants vie for a $25,000 college scholarship in a quiz show format.
The questions asked at the geo bee fall in to seven categories: cultural geography, economic geography, across the country, around the world, plants and animals and geographic comparisons.
Marty studied for the bee by using a Geography Bee book that his aunt bought for him to study, and occasionally sneaks a peek at his older brother Peter’s geography books.
“My family has been really supportive of me, and my friends are really excited that I get this opportunity,” Marty says.
Marty thinks geography is important because he believes that it’s good for people to realize what other countries contribute to the world. Marty thinks that knowing where countries are located and learning what resources they have can teach people a lot about the world today. Understanding different cultures is something he thinks will be really important in the future.
His advice to future geography bee participants: Keep studying geography. Make it fun, quiz your friends and team up with your other siblings to help each other out.