If you have ever been known as the class clown or the prime jokester of a group, chances are, you’ve heard something along the lines of, “you should be a comedian!” This is common among us funny folk — crack a good joke and suddenly you’ve got what it takes for probably one of the most difficult professions in the world.

You can become a doctor if you go to school, you can be a lawyer if you study hard, but you can’t fake a funny bone if you don’t have it. And just because you’re funny doesn’t mean you’ll make a living, either. I guess it’s similar to most acts in the entertainment industry, except stand-up comedy falls directly on audience engagement in a direct environment.

I shrugged at the idea and pretty much said, “Sure, fuck it.” It was simply a placeholder for, “What do you want to be when you grow up, little girl?” Two (three?) words that will send your parents to the ER: stand-up comedian.

Bombing in front of an entire crowd of people is uncomfortable for all parties. What’s worse than being pelted by tomatoes? Getting absolutely nothing from the crowd. Even the few people in the back who stifle a pity-laugh for all of our sakes just make it worse.

For stand-up comedy, it’s not a question of if you will bomb, it’s a matter of when. It’s a fact in the industry, you can’t – or shouldn’t – be a comedian if you can’t acknowledge failure. Whether it’s a bad crowd or you’re just not in the game tonight, it will happen, and no matter how much you prepare for it, the sting of humiliation will haunt you for the rest of the week, or maybe even the rest of your life.

My career in stand-up lasted only a few months, but this knowledge of failure in the industry struck me. Take this lesson from the stand-up comedian’s life: you will have bad nights, you don’t know when you will fail, but when you do, you just have to laugh it off and get back up on that stage.