Paul Gale is a busy man. Since coming to Brandeis, he's worked with Boris' Kitchen, made about one funny video a month, spent a semester at Chicago's legendary Second City and become the Village Provisions on Demand Market's first customer (just look up "Village C-Store Grand Opening" on YouTube; it's not hard to find). Now in his senior year, he's busier than ever, working as the vice president of Boris' Kitchen while also working on a webseries. Fortunately, he found the time to sit down with the Justice to talk about what drew him to comedy, his time at Second City and why having 2,000 kids might not be the life for him.

JustArts: You've been involved in comedy for a while here at Brandeis. Did you get your start here, or have you always been interested in it?

Paul Gale: I actually wanted to be a doctor until I was about 13; I realized I'd have to tell people they were going to die, and I just couldn't do that. So then I wanted to be a filmmaker, then a musician, then a comedian, and now I kind of want to be a filmmaker and comedian. Still, I've been into comedy forever; I love making people laugh. I took an improv class in eighth grade, but forgot about it until I got here. When I got to Brandeis, I tried out for Boris' Kitchen and it was great; it was a really fun audition. It felt really nice to be accepted so soon into the community. It's sort of like a frat; … they're a family, and it's really nice to have something like that.

JA: Since then you've been doing a lot. You spent the first half of your junior year at Second City. What was that like?

PG: Well, I spent 3 months there; the program's called Second City Comedy Studies. I took classes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 4 days a week, more than I took at Brandeis. There was classroom stuff like Acting 3, which was a regular acting class. I took a writing course, and every day we'd bring in a sketch we wrote and review it. Second City's been around for 45 years, so we did sketches by Dan Aykroyd, Neal Simon and SCTV. At the end, we had this 45-minute show where we put on sketches we'd all written.

JA: You've also been putting out a lot of videos since then, like the "Opening of the Village C-Store." Did that also start when you got to Brandeis?

PG: I'd been making movies since around seventh grade. Between then and 10th grade, I made a lot of short, awful films with my friends but stopped after that. During my first year of college, I started making them again and have been ever since. I've made about one video a month, and this year I'm actually working with Prof. Alice Kelikian (FILM) to write a webseries, but we're not sure what the title is. I hope it's something that people on campus can connect to. It won't be Brandeis-specific, but it'll have references to the school.

JA: Do you think the Internet's affected how you see comedy other than as a place to put your material?

PG: I think I'm growing up in a great age. What I love is that with podcasts and blogs, you really get to the struggles and humanity of these people. Being able to read conversations that people are having with their friends, stuff like that, there's so much I can read about these people and their lives, how they came up. I realize that everyone had their own way to success, there's no one set path and that I'm going to have to find my own success.

JA: Other than making people laugh, is there anything about comedy that draws you to it?

PG: Well, I'm a pretty anxious person, but it's all very internal. On a very basic level, I do comedy mostly because I want people to relate to me, and I want to relate to others. I mean, I don't really want to be famous. I don't want a big house or 2,000 kids. I just want to understand people and to be understood. Plus, comedy's just fun.

JA: Any words of advice for anyone trying to get into comedy?

PG: Audition for any group doing tryouts, try writing for The Blowfish; you just need to write and shoot. You need to do things. It's important to just do the work because if you don't, you'll never get any better. You won't get as good as the people you admire unless you put out awful things; God knows I've put out awful things and will continue to put out awful things for years to come. As long as you put something out every once in a while that people like, and most importantly, that you like, you should be fine.