Aristophanes at the Job Interview

University of Chicago alumnus Scott Sherman's biggest mistake during his job interview was talking about Aristophanes. He majored in Fundamentals four years ago, and wrote his B.A. paper on the function of comedy—Heady stuff to bring up to the producers of The Colbert Report.

Sherman (AB '04) is now a staff writer on the upcoming Comedy Central sketch show, Important Things with Demetri Martin, but last Friday he came back to the University to talk about the job hunt. His trajectory included landing a writing job at the Onion and co-authoring a couple of satirical books, The Dangerous Book for Dogs and a sequel about cats in the same vein.

Sherman brought with him the sobering advice that our first-rate education might not get us anywhere in the writing and publishing world.

"Sometimes your smartness here, and I use the word intentionally, can be a good thing... but to pitch relateable stories, you have to make yourself relateable as well. It made me look stupid that I thought I could talk about Aristophanes and Swift and Cervantes, even sitting in a room with three Ivy-grads."

paid-writing "Is not Proust," Sherman added. "It's not 'I will be inspired to write this book when the tea soaks into the biscuits.'"

But there are some plus-sides to coming from UChicago: "A lot of comedy writing requres fast research, (I didn't know anything about cats before I wrote the book) and I learned how to do that at the U of C."