Anytime youre part of a defense like this, its amazing. Im just excited to be a part of it and to be a contributing factor in it.
I couldnt tell you, honestly, why I lasted until the seventh round. I thought I was going to go higher. Its not a big deal. I was always motivated. I had an idea of where I thought it was going to go, and it was a solid feeling, as that went away, I didnt really get too disappointed. I just wanted to go somewhere and show what I could do.
I dont have an iPod. Crazy, right? I have my music on my phone. But if I did have an iPod, I can tell you what would be on it a lot of old-school R&B. Definitely.
My favorite movies? I like Higher Learning, a Spike Lee movie, and Do The Right Thing, which is also a Spike Lee movie. And I like Hook and The Goonies. Youve seen The Goonies, right? Man, its a classic. A classic.
I havent been able to read a lot since the season started, which sucks. Because Im always reading my playbook or studying film. I normally do read a lot. Im pretty boring.
I dont know that Im good at everything; I just like to compete. I dont like to half-ass. Whatever Im doing, I want to be the best. Even in the classroom, I treat it like a competition, like a sport. I used to go in thinking, Im competing against all these people for the best test grade. Thats how I always looked at stuff.
As a kid, I was disruptive. I dont know how to explain it. I wasnt overtly bad, I just was a little disruptive. Id do my work so well, Id do stuff like correct the teacher. I felt like, Im doing all this so well, I dont have to worry about anything.
Theres six of us I have an older sister in her early 30s; an older brother whos 25; me, 23; a younger brother, 22; a younger sister whos 12; and another younger sister whos 6. They love coming up here to the games. Lansing is only like six, seven hours away, so they come to the home games all the time. I love my sisters, man. Im a really good big brother. Theres a big age gap, but when the 12-year-old was really little, that was before I went to college, it was just me and her and my younger brother. Im close with both my little sisters. Theyre both a little disruptive like me. A little too smart for my own good.
My relationship with my parents is good. They live in Lansing with the two little girls. They come to a lot of games. I went to school in Colorado, so they never got a chance to go to a bunch of games there. They came once in awhile, probably one game every season. But if you ask them, they swear they came to like four games in a year. Thats just not true. They came to one game a year. So now, theyre so close, theyre trying to come to every game they want to come every game, every time.
The idea they instilled in me was, you can do whatever you want to do. Like, there was a never point at all growing up where I didnt ever think I could do something. You know how people say, I want to be the President of the United States. There was never a thought in my head that if I wanted to be the president, that I couldnt do that. They always made me feel like I could do anything. I know youre thinking, Everybody tells their kids that, but they really made me believe that. There was no not being smart enough. It was all about how hard youd work for it. And they always taught me to work really hard for it.
I have my economics degree. I dont have my astrophysics degree. Im a couple classes shy of it. Five or six credits, like two classes. I had a lot of plans for post-grad stuff. I wanted to either go to law school or take a course to actually become an astronaut. Itd actually be easier to go into the Air Force if you want to become an astronaut, so maybe I wouldve headed over there. The road is shorter to being an astronaut if you go that route. You never know, someday.
No, Im not a rocket scientist. Well, kind of, I guess. Theres different aspects of that. The science of building rockets really is aerospace engineering. But the science of the flight of rockets and aircraft in space is astrophysics. So I mean, tom-ay-to tom-ah-to. Most people would say rocket scientists are aerospace engineers. When you think of rocket scientists, I think of people who design and build rockets. Astrophysics deals with the science behind it calculating escape velocities, calculating how things work in space like black holes, string theory, things like that. I dont think its that big of a deal. If youre good at math, you can do it. Its not hard.
I cant tap dance. I wanted to be a tap dancer when I was little, and I never got around to it. Its true. I wanted to be Savion Glover, the black guy that tap dances. I saw him, and hes like this icon in the African-American community. Hes really, really good. Hes amazing. He has all these Broadway shows, and I wanted to be a tap dancer. And I still cant tap dance. Theres something I cant do.
I think my best quality is my drive. I think I really have a drive just a drive to be really good at what youre doing, regardless of what youre doing. Just trying to be the best at it.
My worst quality is, I really dont trust people very easily. It takes me awhile to trust people, to let em totally in. It takes me awhile to let my guard down.
I still play the viola. Yes sir. But I dont play it for anyone. Theres a personal story behind it. I just dont play it for anybody anymore. I still play it, but I just dont play it for anybody. I really dont want to get into it. Its sad.
I didnt even want to play the viola, honestly. Ill tell you that story. I wanted to play the guitar. My dad was like, No. Youre not going to play guitar. He was convinced that I needed a string instrument that was, I dont know, close to my ear or something. He had this crazy idea in his head. Its not like my dad has a music background hell tell you he plays the drums or something, but hes a very intelligent guy, and he does a lot of research on his own. When we were kids, he was always researching stuff that helps kids development. All this stuff kept popping up about instruments, and he was like, I have to find out more about this; it clearly helps in the development of kids. A lot of the smarter kids tend to be musically inclined. So he said, Youre going to play an instrument. Now, I didnt realize all this until I was, like, in college. So I was in third or fourth grade, and he said, You have to play one of these: Viola, violin, cello, bass. So I said, OK, I want to play the cello. And he was like, No, you cant play the cello. Im like, What do you mean, NO? Why cant I play the cello? You said it was one of the choices. He said I needed the notes to be close to my ear, or something like that. So he mustve read some study somewhere, some off-the-wall thing that hed read. So the truth was, it had to be the violin or the viola. He made it seem like I had a choice, but I didnt. Not that he forced us I was the one who wanted to be in the music program. So I picked the viola because I was a bigger kid.
My closest friend on the team? You know wide receiver Patrick Williams, (who was promoted Tuesday from) the practice squad? We went to school together at Colorado. We were roommates for four years. We were in the same fraternity. And now hes here. So hes probably my closest friend on the team. He was staying with me for awhile. He just got his own place about a week ago.
Im a pretty calm guy calm and grounded. Just being here has been cool.