Being a student at a huge university like the UW is hard enough for the average student. However, 19-year-old freshman Ross Parsons manages to find some time to juggle all of that and be an award-winning funny guy.

In addition to doing comedy at local venues and organizing his own shows since he came to Seattle in the fall, Parsons was recently named a runner-up at the American Eagle (AE) Campus Comedy Challenge.

Parsons grew up in Hawkinson, a small town near Vancouver, Wash., and said he got into comedy because he wanted the attention. In middle and high school, he was involved in student government and would find himself giving funny speeches during the morning announcements.

He was soon writing his own jokes and performing them in talent and variety shows. Since coming to the UW, he has been writing and improving his jokes. He heard about the AE Comedy Challenge from his RA in Lander.

The competition was a nationwide search by American Eagle Outfitters to find the funniest college students. Competitors had to go through a long process, first by competing against students in their own school for the top spot, and then competing in brackets with winners from other placing schools. After placing in the top two, Parsons competed alongside University of Rhode Island student Billy Horrigan at a comedy showdown set in Cancun, Mexico.

For Parsons, the AE Comedy Challenge was quite a wild ride. After what he said were poorly advertised preliminary competitions Feb. 13 and then again Feb. 22, Parsons waited through almost a month of online voting and checking his percentage statistics daily. He got the call to go to Cancun Feb. 20, and arrived in Cancun the next day after many miserable hours of flying with food poisoning.

"The whole competition process was stressful," Parsons said. "Watching your votes, trying to get the word out, putting up posters [and] trying to advertise on Myspace.com and Facebook. Finals were in the middle of it, too. My family warned me about comedy screwing up my grades but it didn't."

Parsons said the contest process also distracted him from his normal writing habits. He said he tries to dedicate an hour every night to writing jokes, listening to music and having ideas just come to him, but he also gets inspired just by walking around.

"Sometimes I find myself saying, 'You know what, I've just got to make a joke about that,'" he said.

The hour writing sessions are a necessary part of the comedy process. In an hour, three to four pages will be filled with a bunch of one-line jokes, some better than others. Parsons will then usually run them by them by his roommate, who watches a lot of comedy, to see if they're any good.

"Only after that [do] I go to open mic to see if they're any good," he said. "It's a long process to get a joke into rotation."

Parsons faced a number of challenges in Cancun as well. He said comedy should not be done outdoors and in daylight, because, in comedy clubs, everything is dark except the performer, and this helps people feel more comfortable laughing. In Cancun, the comedians followed a bikini contest, so he had to perform for a pretty rowdy, drunk crowd.

Said Harrigan, the AE Campus Comedy Challenge winner, Parsons handled the stress of the competition well.

"Ross did a heck of a set in Cancun," Horrigan said. "He was able to manage performing for drunken meatheads and keep his persona intact. Me, on the other hand, not so much. I learned much more from Ross' comedy during the trip than he probably thinks I did. There's something about he demeanor that just sweats 'funny.'"

Parsons said he looks at comedy as an acting performance rather than being himself on stage.

"I sort of present a character on stage. It's an extension of me, taken to the extreme," he said.

Parsons got the star treatment while in Cancun. He was put up in a nice hotel, had dinner, security, VIP access to clubs and free drinks — pretty much any college student's dream spring break. In addition, Parsons got to meet some of the professional comedians AE brought to the event, including Jasper Redd and Bobby Miyamoto.

"AE treated me very well," Parsons said. "It was the best compensated five-minute gig I've ever had."

In addition to perfoming and comedy, Parsons is also interested in branching out his writing talents and all things French. First and foremost, he'd like to be a comedian — college is a backup. He's considering history, French or creative writing as possible majors.

Reach reporter Shayla Miles at features@thedaily.washington.edu.