Pool Party

 Just kidding. Not really a pool party, since it was just me today.

There was a point of time at MIT, before even crosswords existed in 3C, even before classes started, where I would hang out a lot of the time near the pool table. It started out with me playing Gatas with a bunch of others during one of the REX events. Then at some point, Jian (met him at 1 AM in the 5th floor lounge) taught me how to play Pool during the third night I stayed at Simmons.

There were points where it would be me playing pool with Jian or Liam or Elizabeth or two Chloes and somebody else or anybody else who plays Pool whose name I cannot remember, and other points where I would meet random strangers who want to play Gatas (if this is you, I probably/definitely do not remember your name). That, for the most part, has passed. Or has it?

I have actually gone to the second floor pool table to play by myself once yesterday and twice today. It was mostly a way for me to destress without having to think about anything (crossword construction requires thinking). And while I'm no longer whiffing any of the balls like I was when I first got started... YEESH I can't aim. But it was still fun to go down a memory lane, even if said memory lane was not even a full year ago.

When I first moved into Simmons Hall, ngl, I expected the pool table to be used much more often for stuff like Gatas. Now, it just looks so sad and empty, like a teddy bear sitting on a shelf gathering dust, not being loved or hugged or cuddled... 

Maybe there was just nobody there during the three times I went down there and it's bustling on the weekdays (but why on earth would that be the case?) or maybe it's the MIT workload not giving anybody time to settle down with a game of pool. If the former is the case, then okay, sure. But if the latter is the case, I guess I'm lucky to be part of 3C, where despite the work everybody has to do, we still have time for stuff like NYTimes crosswords. I suspect that it's the latter because I remember Elizabeth in November remarking on how she hasn't played pool much since the beginning of the school year despite playing it almost every day before school started (though to be fair, it is possible that she just lost interest in it???).

Regardless, best wishes with coping with the workload you guys are dealing with. Best wishes for the rest of the semester here at MIT, and I hope you find some time in your lives to do what you love to do outside of the usual academics.