Where I Learned to Take a Hit
How 3 Different Rooms Taught Me the Same Lesson (Comedy Mindhacks #94)
A small update: I’ll continue publishing daily posts on Substack, but beginning April 13th I’ll no longer send daily emails. Instead, and in an attempt to clutter up folks’ inboxes, I’m going to try sending out a weekly newsletter with links to and brief overviews of all the new posts.
Nobody really tells you this up front, but if you spend any time working in a church or on a college campus, you are going to develop thick skin whether you want to or not. In a way, that really sucks but it’s also the truth. I’ve worked in both contexts for much of my adult life. The thing is, you sign up for all the right reasons. You think you’re going to teach, lead, encourage, and maybe even inspire someone. But what you don’t realize on the front end of that is that you’re also signing up for unsolicited feedback from people who formed an opinion about you before you even introduced yourself. Now, add stand-up comedy into the mix, and suddenly all three worlds start overlap in ways that are really hard to ignore. That’s my story anyway.
I’ll start with the church, because that’s where I learned this first. While I love the church, there are things about “church people” that bother me. In general, the real and actual Christians I know are kind, generous, and genuinely care, but many of them will also tell you exactly what they think with a smile on their face. What’s crazy is, as a pastor, I’ve had people shake my hand and, in the same breath, tell me what didn’t work in my sermon, what felt off, or how things used to be done before I got there. It’s not malicious (well, sometimes it is), sadly it seems to be that’s just how it goes. Over time, pastors learn how to receive criticism from someone who is, at the same exact time, asking about their family and offering them a plate of food. It’s a real skill to be able to handle that, and it translates to comedy more than most people might think.
Honestly, comedy crowds aren’t all that different once the setting is stripped away. The main difference is they are prone to completely skipping the pleasantries and getting straight to the point. When you’re a comedian who posts a clip online, for instance, nobody and I literally mean nobody, cares how long you worked on the material or how well it went somewhere else. They’re sitting there, arms folded, waiting to see if you can actually move them and, if you don’t, they’ll leave a stupid or hateful comment.
Then there are college students, which is its own kind of environment. I genuinely enjoy working with many of them, and I believe in many of them, and in what they’re capable of. But the relational dynamic has shifted. Authority doesn’t carry the same automatic weight it once did, and attention is something you have to earn every single time. A syllabus and the title of “Dr.” aren’t enough to hold attention or even get respect. As a professor, you’re competing with everything else in their world, and they’re not afraid to check out if you lose them.
As frustrating as it is in the moment, it has a way of being great preparation for comedy, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment. As a preacher, professor, and comedian, I’ve come to terms with this reality: no one owes me their attention. That’s true whether I’m in a classroom, a church, or on a stage. Every time I step up in front of people, I have to make the case that I’m worth listening to. And the repetition of doing that does something over time because it forces consistency. It also forces loads of self-honesty, because weaknesses get exposed quickly in these sorts of environments.
When I first started pastoring, an older pastor was mentoring me. It used to drive me crazy when he’d tell me i needed to develop thick skin. He was in his 70s at the time and had decades of practice while I was new to it all, but that didn’t matter to him. Over the past two decades, I’ve learned that thick skin doesn’t show up all at once, and it doesn’t come from one big moment. Thick skin builds slowly, through a series of smaller moments where things didn’t go the way I planned but I had to keep going anyway. Maybe a joke or story didn’t land, a point didn’t connect, a room didn’t respond, but I still had to finish what I started. That process is frustrating, sometimes super frustrating, but it’s also very formative. Over time, it creates a kind of stability that isn’t dependent on how things are going in the moment.
For the last two years, I’ve been teaching joke writing to my college student on a weekly basis. I have given them free reign to roast me. And they definitely take me up on the offer. Just yesterday in class, we were starting to write jokes and a student called me over to his desk to ask for help with his joke. He said, “I have a setup, but I’m struggling with the punch. Can you help.” I said, “Sure. What do you have so far?” He goes, “I can’t stand hearing Dr. Halcomb’s voice. That’s all I’ve got.” Literally, I’m his professor. And literally he’s asking me for help. Then, as we’re working with the setup he goes, “Ah, I’ve got it: I can’t stand hearing Dr. Halcomb’s voice, because I can’t stand toddlers.” He laughed. I laughed. Students around us laughed.
Then, I kid you not. A female student on the other side of the room raises her hand. I go over to her and she says she needs help. I tell her to share what she has. She says, “I can’t stand Dr. Halcomb’s class.” The girl sitting next to her goes, “I can’t either. Dr. Halcomb, you should just cancel this class today.” (Mind you, this student has taken my Comp I and Comp II classes and has been with me all year and has made that statement every single time she’s attended class.) My point is, many professors wouldn’t be able to handle these sorts of remarks in a way where they could just laugh at them. Many professors would or could never help their students write roast jokes about them.
Why? Because it’s scary. And in comedy many things are scary. Emailing bookers, bombing, stage fright, producing shows, nasty online comments, etc. But because I have a singular focus, nobody’s comments are going to derail me. No matter what anyone else says or thinks, I’ll keep going anyway. I’ve learned how to either absorb the hits or let them bounce off without letting them derail me. That kind of experience just comes with time and a steady stream of hard experiences like these. The thick skin forms in different settings but carries over to them all.
And honestly, once I realized that, everything started to feel a little more manageable. What I mean is, I’ve realized that, throughout the last couple of decades, I’ve not just been dealing with random tough moments, I’ve been shaped by them. And if I can handle a church lady who serves me meatloaf while critiquing me, or a college student who asks me to help them write roasts about me, I can handle whatever comedy throws at me, too.
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