#poolislife

If you couldn’t tell from my last blog, or the title of this one, I love rap music. I know that this may seem unusual coming from a white girl, but rap has always been a major part of my life. This goes way back to when I was in elementary school when I first heard Eminem’s album Encore. Ever since then, I have grown to appreciate a variety of different rappers over the years including Kanye, Drake, Schoolboy Q, Odd Future, The Roots, A$AP Ferg, and Logic. I listen to all of those guys regularly, but if I were to tell you my top three favorites they would be Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar, and J.Cole. 

Another thing that is note-worthy about my life-long obsession with rap is that I go beyond just listening to it. I also enjoy reading about, writing about it, watching interviews, and most of all talking about it. Since I do like writing about it, you can expect hip hop will be a common topic for my future blogs, although I promise I will have some variety so every single one doesn’t look like a Complex article.

Besides rap, another favorite pastime of mine is playing pool. This is something I have taken up more recently and I don’t geek out over nearly as much as I do with rap. The only reason why I took it up in the first place was to have something to do when I was living in my old dorm during my freshman year. 

On the floor I lived on, we had a lounge and the only source of entertainment in that lounge was a pool table. First of all, I should say that this pool table was the nastiest, most ghetto thing I had ever seen. Its felt top was covered in stains, the balls were chipped, the cues were broken, and worst of all the table was on a lean, so all the balls would roll to one side. It was on this atrocity where I learned to play pool, and to be honest it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I figured that if I were to learn to play well on this shitty table, then what can stop me from playing well on a good one?

I would have to say the best thing to come out of all of those games I played on Porter’s struggle table was meeting new people and also discovering how much of a great stress-reliever pool is. Whenever I would play a game, I wouldn’t think of my classes or anything else that was on my mind. All I would be thinking about is how I was going to beat my opponent, and everything else melted away for the entire twenty or thirty minute duration. It made me understand the importance of taking a small break from reality everyday.