My stomach is rumbling. I am extremely hungry. I skipped breakfast this morning because it is ill-advised to eat before a yoga class. Yoga began at noon, though. Now it is one-thirty and I have not had anything since my early dinner the night before. I decide to go down to Snyder-Phillips' cafeteria, the Gallery.
I go downstairs. I walk towards the shining entry to the Gallery. I stop. I read the menu. The information posted on the daily cafeteria menu influences many of my daily decisions; yet, I have never paid specific notice to my interactions with these documents before.
The way I interact with the menus affects what I decide to eat on a day-to-day basis. The menus are extremely important, because they allow someone going into the dining hall to decide what they want before they have to get in line to wait for their meals and move things along. With hundreds of people passing through the Gallery to eat each day, it is important for things to run smoothly; people must be able to efficiently get their food, eat it, and leave for the next people to come in. Without the menus, it would make this process much more difficult.
It is said that the Gallery is the best dining hall on the Michigan State University campus. Many students and staff members walk, ride the bus, or bicycle across campus in order to eat a meal there. The MSU website posts an online menu for what the Gallery is serving each day; this is an advantageous tool for the students who travel farther to get here. They are, therefore, able to see if something they want is being served on a particular day. This resource is also used by many students who live more locally; before they even go downstairs, they can know their meal options for the day make up their minds without having to read the posted menu.
The menus are not only posted directly outside of the Gallery's entrance and online, but as soon as one enters the cafeteria, plates with each of the menu items are presented for people to see. There are labels that go along with each platter, making it easy to recognize which station each different meal is served at and again describing the food. Furthermore, at each station itself, there is a posted list of the items being served there. Many students neglect the master menus posted both at the entrance and on the internet, and refuse to look at the plates of food visually representing each meal; they instead wander aimlessly around the cafeteria looking at each of the individual stations' menus.
I am the type of person who always stops outside of the Gallery and looks at the menu sheets posted on the bulletin-style board. The board is divided into four sections, one section is devoted to the menu for each meal of the day, and the fourth section talks about the meal plan option of a combo exchange. The board reads from right to left and top to bottom, like a book. The first meal posted is breakfast, the lunch menu is posted to its right, and the dinner menu is in the next row. This makes it easy for someone to visually find what they need.
When I approach the board, I notice that the menus are printed in black ink, on white sheets of matte 8.5 by 11 inch paper. The paper is matted to black paper and affixed to the board. When I go down to eat at 1:30pm, I realize that it is lunchtime. Therefore, I ignore the rest of the postings, after ascertaining which menu is indeed posting the foods available for me to eat for lunch. I use prior knowledge to determine which sections of the menu I will and will not read, making decisions based on my likes and dislikes and knowing what each station typically serves.
I cannot truly analyze my moment-by-moment response to this text because I did not even think of my interactions with this document as notable until after I was already eating my meal, but it is possible to take my retrospective account to analyze the effectiveness of the text.
To summarize this text, I can tell you that October 4, the Gallery was serving foods at six different stations. That was the center of focus for this document. More specific points that especially resonated with me were that Latitudes was serving a Sunday brunch with french toast and bacon. I remember this specific point of the text, because that is the meal I ended up choosing to eat. Other particular items I am able to sayback are that New Traditions was serving ham, Ciao! had on its menu Denver Omelet, Pepperoni, and Cheese Pizzas, Brimstone was serving Veggie Burgers, Hamburgers, Cheeseburgers, and Chicken Sandwiches, and that the Berg had some sort of salad, a vegetable soup, and a soup du jour. No true arguments were made; however options were presented to the reader of the menu.
The center of gravity for this text was the top of the document having "Sunday, October 4 Lunch". Other than that, the reader chooses their own center of gravity for this text, depending on their personal preferences and what they feel like eating for that meal. The center of gravity becomes what they choose it to be.
As someone who is hungry and wants to eat, I am already aware of my own meal preferences, my likes, and my dislikes. I begin at the top of this document and the first thing I read is "Sunday, October 4 Lunch". I read all of the meal headings, to see which sheet of paper on the board has the right information for me. Since I am not eating a combo exchange, I skip the fourth sheet of paper entirely.
Going back to the lunch menu, I begin reading:
- "New Traditions". I see that they are serving ham and move on to the next subheading, skipping all further information.
- "Brimstone" is serving all of its typical items, and I am not really in the mood for grilled food. I skim this section, though, just to see if anything really does strike me. It does not.
- I next go down to "The Berg", I might be in the mood for soup or salad. I see that there is vegetable soup and a soup of the day. I have never heard of the kind of salad being served; I move on: I have had the vegetable soup before and I did not like it very much. I am not really that much in the mood to find out and have to explore what the "Soup du jour" is that is being served either.
- I go to the next column. "Sunday Brunch" sounds really delicious actually, I keep in mind that that is being served.
- I know that "Ciao!" serves pizza and I do not want pizza, I skim this section of the lunch menu.
- I then see the desserts on the menu and decide that I should skip dessert for the day.
After reading the entire text, I know what my options are to eat, what I want, and where to get this. I enter the cafeteria, get a tray, a drink, and walk over to Latitudes. I get my meal and sit down. My questions are answered and my expectations that the menu would tell me what to get and where to get it are fulfilled.
My response, overall, to the document is to go to the station where it tells me that I can find what I want, and I eat my meal.
My body's response to the menus posted over the past month is the typical "freshman fifteen" (no, it is not a myth) and the inability of me to zip my jeans. Obviously, the document is effective.
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