Rhetorical Analysis of a Place

When deciding where I wanted to go for this assignment, I thought that the RPAC would be a good place to sit and observe, because there is always so much going on. I ended up in the Courtside Café with even more to watch than what I had anticipated, and I never even made it all the way into the RPAC!
I have to be honest, while doing this project I that I’m a bit of a pre-judger. When I entered into the Courtside Café I had the expectation of seeing tons of sweaty people grabbing a quick bite to refuel on some of the calories they had just lost. Although I was right, and I did see many people of this type, I also noticed that many of the Courtside Café’s customers did not seem to be there to work out at all. Probably a little less than half of the people in the room with me were just in their regular clothes having dinner and chatting with their friends. There were also a good number of people in the café who weren’t working out or eating dinner, but seemed to simply use the facility as a place to meet up with friends and then head someplace else. It is very obvious that the function of this facility is to give students the opportunity to work out and participate in physical activity (especially when you consider the RPAC is the Recreation and Physical Activity Center), but it is also very clear that this is not the only purpose of the building. As I watched people come and go visiting with their friends I decided there was no denying that this was a place where people felt comfortable to just chill out, hang with their friends, and relax; which when you think about it is slightly ironic—a work out center for relaxing? But that’s what it is!