Navigating High School Extracurriculars: From Comics to Improv Comedy (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Colleges love extracurricular activities. It is the final say whether you'll get into the college or not. You got a perfect score on the SAT? Yeah, but Billy played tennis. So I went to a preparatory school my freshman year, and I joined the newspaper club. And the only reason I did was because I wanted to put my comics in the school newspaper. I was a comic freak back then, still am though, but I went to like two meetings, and it became very obvious that we weren't going to make a school newspaper. So I stopped going, and I was basically a derp for the rest of the year. Sophomore year rolls around, and I was going public. And one of my friends, he suggested that I do track and field. And I was like, oh, that doesn't seem like a very physically demanding sport. Yeah, yeah. Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. On the first day, I was so bad, I threw up on the warm-up lap. I mean, at least I was pushing myself. On the second day, we ran off school grounds before school started. And everyone else made it back before the starting bell rang. But me, being the slowest one on the team, didn't make it back until first period had already started. And then I had to explain to my teacher why I was late and sweaty. I quit track team after those two times, and I was basically a derp again for the rest of the year. Then junior year rolls around. And this one girl, she told me, James, you're so funny. You should try out for the improv team. And I was like, yeah, okay. Improv was basically a group of all the cool theater kids. And if you have any experience with theater kids, then you know that they're just a real treat. I walk into the room for tryouts. Everyone is loud. People already know each other. And no one is quiet, except for me sitting in a chair by myself. Everyone took a turn playing an improv game. And when it was my turn, I went up, and I tried my best. And then I sat back down. And I guess the captain saw something in me because I made the team. And it was awesome. But I only went two times. I'm just kidding. I stayed in there for the rest of my junior and senior year. Oh, and the newspaper team at the public school asked if I could make comics for their newspaper. One quick story about improv. So we were considered a competitive improv group that competed against other schools doing shows. And we were playing this one game called Categories. Normally you were given a category like fruit. We would stand in a line, and if the judge pointed to us, we would have to say something in that category. And if you couldn't think of anything, or you said something that wasn't in the category, you were out. So we played the game, and it comes down to me and one other player. And our category was occupations. And out of the millions of occupations to choose from, the first thing I said was porn star. Everyone started laughing and giggling, but I was too caught up in the moment. Yeah, let's go. Has anyone said crack dealer yet? The judge said I was inappropriate, and the other team were. So that's my story. Did it help me get into a good college? No. But if there's anything you should learn from this, it's that you should not be doing any sports. Stomach, shut up.