By Kayleigh Robinson
This weekend I went to a ‘first timers’ night at a comedy club in Guelph -- not my usual weekend activity, but free tickets are free tickets -- and it almost sent me into an existential crisis.
The whole premise of the night was that the 8 performers had never done stand-up on stage before but wanted to find a way to start. They had 5 minutes each, and were chosen at random -- they only knew what half of the night they were performing in, but not the order. The host encouraged us to be nice, emphasised the fact that the people about to get on stage had never done this before, and called the first person onto the stage.
It went…. Surprisingly well.
Sure, some jokes really didn’t land, and there was one guy who went up with cue cards that was so nervous he almost dropped them, but everyone went up and got through 5 minutes of what I can only guess to be absolutely nerve-wracking comedy successfully.
As someone with capital ‘A’ Anxiety, this would be my worst nightmare.
This internship has already challenged me to do things that may seem normal to most people -- most notably discussing what I can do better with my supervisor. The idea of failure, or not doing good enough, can be absolutely paralyzing. It's our fourth year for a lot of us, and we’re all about to be faced with a lot of ‘first times’ and failures as we start to leave the safety of university.
I’d like to think most people have this experience -- when we leave high school we’re expected to have everything figured out. We should know what program, at what university, and what type of job we’re working towards. I would also like to hope that we all realized, one semester in, that none of that is true. I’ve changed my mind more times than I can count. I think this internship has helped me -- what I like and dislike about the environment I’m in, talking to real people in a field I might be interested in pursuing, being forced to do things that make me uncomfortable, all add up to a very valuable experience in what it’s like in the real world.
There are always going to be new ‘first times’ that we’ll have to tackle. It might not be doing stand-up comedy, but doing new things and putting yourself out there -- no matter how fear-inducing it is -- should always be a part of life.
We’ll never learn how to fail if we only do things we’re successful at. This is something I still struggle with, and I’m sure a lot of people feel that way too, we’re taught a lot of the time that failure is something we shouldn’t let happen, but I think the exact opposite is more valuable. We won’t always get that job, or get into that Master’s program and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be putting ourselves out there.
Failure can be funny and it can be devastating, but it is always worth it in the end.