Finding your own way

I tend to avoid things like this because, well, as much as I agree that men and women are different, I hate to encourage more stereotypes. Still, I thought this part rang true:

Studies over the past decade have shown that women are likelier to rely on landmarks and visual cues, and men on maps, cardinal directions (such as north and south) and gauges of distance.

All my male friends judge things based on directions really easily -- they can tell which direction they are going in without any apparent landmarks, and tell me things like "head east on that street," which means absolutely nothing to me unless there sun is in the sky or I have some way of knowing that I'm already pointed north, or something, so I can gauge from that. I'm really bad at judging directions once I have to reorient myself: for example, if I get out of a subway station or a bus, I don't know which side of the street I'm on or what direction I'm facing, so I can easily start marching off in the wrong direction. (That's how, in London, Sean and I walked like five blocks away from our hostel out of the Tube station, with about five suitcases, despite the fact that I claimed I knew the city really well.)

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