Well, marble has veins and can be tempermental, but not granite. 

I re-did the bathroom to marble floors and I installed crown moldings.

And every summer I’m looking to repeat this pattern of full time summer work, followed by part time while I’m in school.

There isn't an adult alive in America that hasn't been hammered with script after script...so we've gotten good at hearing the patterns. 

You may also have fallen prey to a common human foible, which is thinking patterns exist when they don't.

The experience I got from poker gave me a lot, so even though I'm completely new to RE, I see A LOT OF patterns in it.

You'd look at historic patterns and owner/occupant profiles, we don't have enough data points to figure the probability but 1.2% of profit is an acceptable known risk by most standards. 

So deciding which homes are "better" is something of a complex formula.So I recommend South Side and Friendship based on modern patterns of urban renewal along with some attributes of solid building stock that would offer value to an investor.

It was tiny marble squares that were so well done they would last forever with a cleaning and sealer

One DUI can be a mistake, whereas multiple DUI's speak to a pattern of behavior is the thinking on that I believe.