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United States24771 Posts
You're a comedian. You host five 45-minute comedy shows each weekday. The audience varies in size from approximately 20-30 people. Each of your shows needs to have a different routine, and you can't repeat a routine within a one-year period.
During the show, every member of the audience must be engrossed in your performance. If even one person isn't paying attention, or isn't enjoying your show, you are failing them as their comedian. You must perform your show in order to meet the varying needs and sense of humor of each member of the audience. If anyone in your audience is deaf you should set up closed captions for them. If anyone is blind, you may need to describe the motions you make with your hands or props you use during the performance.
You sometimes do 90 minute performances instead of 45. Your total minutes performed for the day still adds up to 225, but now you have to keep the audience's attention for twice as long. Once again, every member of the audience must be fully engrossed for the entirety of the 90 minutes. The irony is that many of the people in the audience don't want to be there and don't like comedy. Some of them even have a tendency to have conversations while you perform or smash the furniture into the floor, distracting everyone. Be careful about having them get kicked out though... it's an obvious tell that you aren't an effective comedian.
The comedy club owners sit in on your performances about 8 times per year. For these 8 sessions you must change up your routine significantly in order to passify them. This usually is detrimental to the quality of your performance from the perspective of your audience (you are much better at running a comedy show than the owners are), but it's not within your power to do much about it. They expect you to have evidence that each person in the audience understood each joke. At the end of the show they write up an evaluation where they note one or two things they noticed that they thought were good and about ten that were bad and need to be fixed.
The microphone is often broken too.
For some, this may be too big a challenge. You, however, must be successful. After all, you're a comedian.
 
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I am confused but intrigued.
edit: after reading the comment below, I understand. I come from a family of teachers. You have my respect.
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Much respect to teachers everywhere. Shit pay, bad hours, a lot of work- all for one of the most important jobs on Earth.
Cheers.
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that is one of the longest riddles i've ever seen. Extremely well written, funny and concise..... this is definately one of the best posts i've ever seen on TL ;p
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... but it's not a riddle.
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On December 07 2011 12:39 Probe1 wrote:
Much respect to teachers everywhere. Shit pay, bad hours, a lot of work- all for one of the most important jobs on Earth.
Cheers.
I feel like an idiot 'cause I couldn't figure it out right away, even though I've heard the exact same kind of ranting from my mother for YEARS, being a teacher.
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I should really stop skim reading apparently.
Teaching is rough.
Teaching Phys Ed is even harder.
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Damn. I live in Ohio too-- I helped pass Issue 2 (which repealed Senate bill 5-- which took away collective bargaining from teachers). So many props for teachers. So many.
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How were we supposed to know that by comedian you mean teacher? I am honestly curious how you reached that conclusion, Probe1.
EDIT: Hey wait a second. Why haven't you made a 10,000th post, Probe1?
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ROFL at people missing the point.
Teachers are bad ass. It is rather amusing that the only real perk they get is extended time away from teaching. Certainly tells you something about the profession 
On a separate note, I think my sig is somewhat appropriate for this blog.
"We're actors - we're the opposite of people" - Rosancrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
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Pretty cool metaphor
(Bonus points for anyone clicking this because of watchmen)
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Maybe it's different in the US but I've yet to see a teacher who held themselves or others to those standards.
OTOH, impossible standards are a great excuse to treat good and poor teachers the same way. After all both of them failed and we knew we were asking something impossible in the first place.
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Yeah, anyone who becomes a teacher must really love it or be blissfully ignorant of the life they are entering.
Either way, I guess I have to respect them. That's mad dedication.
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And you can get never get fired because you're part of the teac... comedian's union
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On December 07 2011 13:12 hypercube wrote:
Maybe it's different in the US but I've yet to see a teacher who held themselves or others to those standards.
OTOH, impossible standards are a great excuse to treat good and poor teachers the same way. After all both of them failed and we knew we were asking something impossible in the first place.
Isn't that why teachers get into teaching  To educate kids. Unfortunately to do that in the current environment you have to put up with what Micro has listed and get shit all pay or respect for it. Failure is a relative thing, a teacher who repeats themselves is less of a failure than one who doesn't bother to pitch.
To me the point of this is not that the standards are impossible but that the support for teachers is non-existent. Swing for the fences and all that. Nothing wrong with high expectations but when there is no respect or support for achieving those standards, why bother?
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On December 07 2011 13:16 Gatsbi wrote:
And you can get never get fired because you're part of the teac... comedian's union
I'm not sure if you're honestly implying that teachers shouldn't have unions with the shit they have to go through.
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On December 07 2011 13:21 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 13:16 Gatsbi wrote:
And you can get never get fired because you're part of the teac... comedian's union I'm not sure if you're honestly implying that teachers shouldn't have unions with the shit they have to go through.
With a name like Gatsbi you can bet on it...
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Australia8532 Posts
Q_Q more jeez!
Just jokes yo! Great write up - pretty smart of your Mr Micronesia!
What are the parts of your job that your enjoy? Why do you keep doing it?
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Please don't act like it's hard to be a teacher. Plus, you get summers off.
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On December 07 2011 13:21 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 13:16 Gatsbi wrote:
And you can get never get fired because you're part of the teac... comedian's union I'm not sure if you're honestly implying that teachers shouldn't have unions with the shit they have to go through.
I appreciate good teachers, I really do. I even had a few in high school, but there's shitty teachers who have held their jobs for YEARS for no reason other than that it's next to impossible to fire a teacher with their unions. In my opinion, it's a large part (but not the only reason) of why the USA's education system is shit.
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EPT
