Matt Schotte

February 6, 2011
English 102
Essay 1 Draft

Forever Focusing on Fitness

Breathe in, breathe out! These two concepts possibly might be the most important

concepts of going to a gym and, especially, lifting weights. A gym can consist of running

equipment such as treadmills, bikes, and elliptical machines and also lifting equipment like

bench presses, squat racks, and dumbbells. The gym is a place where you can just relieve stress

and stay in shape, but personally in my opinion to have fun. Obviously most people go to the

gym to better themselves by lifting weights or running on a treadmill, but do they actually enjoy

going? The gym, for me is a place I can go to have a good workout that I enjoy. Obviously the

main reason of going is to become healthier and exercise, but the gym is part of my daily

schedule. I have a very high interest in getting into shape and learning more about how to

become stronger and healthier by going into the gym, hence why I chose to be an exercise

science and health fitness major. With this very high interest I will be conducting interviews with

gym members and also studying people while they are at the gym exercising.

The Thornburg Gym, located in the Tinsley Center, is what I will be researching for my

ethnography project. I chose this site because for the the past two years my second home has

become the gym. My brother, who is twenty-three, right now, got me interested and hooked onto

lifting weights and becoming physically stronger, when I was about seventeen. My brother and I

have a special bond with each other and are pretty much best friends and one thing that we

always do together is go to the gym. We can spend countless amounts of time at the gym and not

even realize that we have been there for two hours. I have come to realize that the price for the
Thornburg gym is ridiculously cheap which only costs one hundred dollars for a yearly

membership when most memberships are twenty to thirty dollars a month which adds up to two

hundred and forty dollars a year minimum. The price you pay for a gym membership at the

Thornburg Gym is a steal; you cannot get a better price. The Thornburg Gym has everything you

need in a gym and new equipment that is wanting to be used. I’ve also noticed that the gym is

somewhat empty from the hours of seven in the morning to four in the afternoon which is why I

always go to the gym to around two-thirty in the afternoon. From four to eight is when the gym

is most populated.

Muscle heads, gorilla juice heads, and steroid users are all common nicknames to the

bigger culture in the gym where all the attention is attracted to. There are not just “body

builders” in a gym, but also athletes, parents, grandparents, but most gyms have a college student

populated culture. Most parents, especially woman, go to the gym to lose weight after pregnancy

and men are forced to go by their wives, instead of sitting on the couch with a nice brew

watching a sports game. My main focus is going to be the college, middle-aged population that

attends the gym. I believe that most college students go to the gym and just start going to the
gym at this time of their life because they get bored after classes and do not want to just sit in

their dorm rooms while consuming unhealthy food and watching television. The main reason

why people go to the gym is to stay in shape, but for others they think they are “in shape”

because they attend a gym, but do not fully utilize their gym time. People like to call these

people that do not utilize their gym time “posers” especially when they standing around doing

nothing and just socializing. There should be no reason for someone to go to the gym if they are

not going to do anything and just stand around wasting perfectly good space. Also, another main

factor that I believe is MTV’s hit show Jersey Shore. I believe people I going to the gym more

after seeing that show and wanting to look like Ronnie or the Situation. The show came up with

slogans such as GTL, which means gym, tan, laundry and also the term gorilla juice head which

means a strong muscular guy, that people assume use steroids.

Are you kidding? I am the gym. I am legit a gym rat, my friends will always bash on me

because I am always at the gym at least once a day. It is a time for me to be relaxed and calming

and just lift weights. It makes me feel good to lift weights and I can feel good about myself
knowing that I’m bettering myself by working out. I get an adrenaline rush to just work out and I

truly enjoy it because it makes me feel good about myself as a whole. I might be possibly

working in a gym after I graduate and get out of college as a personal trainer or possibly a

physical therapist which will make me thoroughly enjoy my occupation even more. I believe that

having a job you enjoy is much better than trying to be filthy rich with a job that you cannot

stand. Of course I am excited to study groups of people in this atmosphere. It is going to be very

enjoyable to look at this community and actually break down and study what is actually going on

and what people think and do. I believe that I can gain people’s trust by questioning and

interviewing people that attend the gym, but could probably tell if someone is not telling the

truth by their body language and appearance. The main things that I question are: Why do people

go to the gym? Do people like going to the gym? Do they feel forced into going to a gym? What

exercises are most people doing? What do they look for in a gym? Is there a difference between

one gym and another? Soon enough these questions will no longer be mysteries.

In conclusion, I am very thrilled to be researching a place I love to go to and have so

much interest in. I am part of the regular demographic of the Thornburg Gym since I go there

every day and around the same age as everyone besides the few older residence in Bridgewater

that attend this gym. I go to the university in which the gym is located at, I want to better myself

like most people, and I want to find out what I don’t know about the people in this community.

Matt,

There is a lot of good information, which addresses the assignment, buried in here. What

needs to be worked on is the repetitiveness of many words and topics, as well as the
organization. Your thoughts skip around a lot without any real cohesiveness to connect

paragraphs to one another. I think one way to help with this is to think about what you really

don’t need in the essay. What parts are not really helping readers in any way?