How My Homework Brought Comedian Bobby Lee to OSU

It’s safe to say most students dread homework. However if doing said homework brings comedian Bobby Lee to your college town than consider me a valedictorian.

It all started with a mock proposal I developed for my Business Writing class during my sophomore year at Oregon State University.

Having previously worked as an intern promoting comedy shows in Hawaii, I took that experience and combined it with what I was currently learning in the classroom. I wanted to do something great for OSU – I wanted to bring comedy to Corvallis.

And I already had a famous comic in mind…

Bobby Lee Oregon State

Bobby Lee promo

I first met Bobby Lee during a Hawaii stop on the Kings of Comedy tour where I worked backstage. After the show we all went to dinner and on the ride back to his hotel, my boss, Bobby Lee, and I, began to formulate plans for Lee to perform in Oregon…That was before I even stepped foot on campus.

Obviously promoting a full blown comedy show as a freshman wasn’t going to be easy. I was a youngin and hardly had any business knowledge let alone could hardly navigate campus without a map.

However a year later and  a 3-credit business class under my belt was all I needed. I also created a Facebook group to communicate updates and re-market interested students, though the old-school group function wasn’t nearly as powerful as the Facebook Fan pages of today.

The proposal was never meant to go further than that class, until I used the plan as the foundation to bring the idea into reality.

The school newspaper, The Daily Barometer, wrote an article prior to the comedy show. Later the Democratic Herald interviewed me about the outcome.

Jacob Curtis and Bobby Lee after the comedy show

Bobby Lee and I after the comedy show