Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: TruLife

Class was funny for 17 students this semester.

This semester 17 students left Jay Self's JINS course with smiles on their faces. This is the second time Self, assistant professor of communication, has taught the Art and Science of Humor Junior Interdisciplinary studies course, which was designed to allow students to analyze humor and its effects on the mind and body.

Self said his students wrote three papers analyzing stand-up routines, the career of a comedian and a comedian's portrayal of a humorous message. As a final project, Self requires the students to develop their own stand-up comedy routine and present it at an off-campus event called "One Night Stand (Up)," which will be at WrongDaddy's tomorrow at 8 p.m.

"They're building a routine throughout the course of the semester," Self said. "It takes a long time to really develop, and really good comedians will take maybe a year to get a good 30-minute set of material."

Each student has five to seven minutes to deliver their stand-up to a live audience. Routines will be videotaped, so peers can later view and critique each student. Students write what they have learned in a paper to receive their final grade, Self said.

"One of the hardest things to do is stand-up comedy because it's you all alone with a microphone and that's it," Self said. "And you're all of a sudden responsible for entertaining [people]. Last time we did this there were 300 people in the audience."

Junior Roger Alexander said he decided to take this JINS course because he is a business administration major and was hoping that learning about humor and how it works would help him in his career.

"I like watching a lot of stand-up comedy, and I like laughing, like everybody else," Alexander said. "I always thought that if I could add some humor into the business aspect of my career - if I could learn how humor works and learn how to set up jokes to be funny - that would help the social aspect of working with business clients."

Alexander said he saw the stand-up assignment as a challenge for him in this course.

"Dr. Self said six people dropped out of the class after the first day, but I stayed because I saw it as a challenge," Alexander said. "It's something I've never done before and just because it's hard doesn't mean I'm going to run away from it. I see it as something I can take on, and if I'm successful with it, it will be another accomplishment under my belt."

Continued...

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