Just a heads up for those who might be interested in my comedy podcast; I Don’t Know If You Know This season two kicked off today and you can get it here.
Tag: I Don’t Know If You Know This
Part of me definitely feels wasted. Not in the “Alex is drunk again” kind of way, but in the “I’m not being used efficiently at work” kind of way. Being an assistant English teacher in Japan comes with little to no responsibility, and that’s fine sometimes, but there is a severe problem with this junior high that I work at. They ask nothing of me, want none of my suggestions, and then every non-English teacher seems to despise me cause it looks like I never do any work.
I was scheduled to teach three lessons today, but due to the 3rd graders practicing their graduation ceremony (a month in advance!) and the 1st and 2nd graders have finals (a month before the semester’s over!) I was left with nothing to do. So I whip out the MacBook Air and start typing away on a blog post, tinkering with I Don’t Know If You Know This and looking for tax forms so that my government back in America can keep an eye on me no matter what country I live in or where I’m earning my living.
If anyone should happen to stroll by my desk and catch a glimpse of my monitor, they’d probably think I’m goofing off. It’s true, I’m not working, but when no one will give you any kind of work to do, it’s damn near impossible to sit here staring at my thumbs for three hours. Also, there’s no point in drafting lesson plans that’ll never get used either.
This doesn’t happen at the elementary schools I work at. For one, they don’t cancel classes like this. Two, they seem to value my input and welcome suggestions for lesson material. Three, they’re just always nice and don’t appear to have it in for me the way the dick gym teacher does here at the junior high. I’ve only got another 13 days or so at this school, so if I can just bare with it a little longer, I might make it out with my sanity intact.
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If it’s broke…
Alex and I were talking about the format of I Don’t Know If You Know This and what we want the show to be. I think the consensus was: we want it to be different. I’m sure that’s what the majority of creative people say about their project so I know we’re not reinventing the wheel when we say that. So what does being different entail?
- Don’t be “two guys on a couch”.
- Don’t sound like middle schoolers who got a semi-decent microphone.
- Do something that we enjoy but also that others can enjoy as well.
- Create the appearance of high production value on a shoestring budget.
I think that the first three are easily done by reigning in our own childish tendencies and planning. Most of our shows in the past were done with little to no planning. Even now, we make detailed notes about the things we want to talk about on the show, but those notes are limited to ourselves. I can see the benefit of keeping details to oneself, but it’s clear that we need to outline the show before we produce it. That’s how professionals do things, and if we want to do this professionally, which I think both of us would like, we need to mimic certain behaviors of people who have successfully done what we want to do. I’m not saying we need to rip off the styles of other podcasters, I just believe that if you want to do something well, it doesn’t hurt by copying successful bit at least a little bit at first.
The plan moving forward?
- Pull back on needless profanity
- Coordinate the show together
- Create segments that feel more professional
I think that my doing these three things, the show will be a tighter, more professional-sounding production. I would love to eliminate jokes that fall flat, seemingly unfocused rambling and if we get sponsor money, hire a speech coach to help me rid myself of all the “likes” and “ums” that I can’t seem to stop spewing out.