Colin Jost is a prime example of the kind of person who enrolls at Harvard with the goal of studying economics and graduates with a dissertation on Vladimir Nabokov. And for some reason, that bizarre academic diversion from spreadsheets to Russian modernism proved to be the ideal prelude to one of the most brilliant comedic careers in American television.
Jost enrolled at Harvard in the fall of 2000 after graduating from Manhattan’s Regis High School, a prestigious Jesuit school that typically produces individuals with very serious career goals. Economics made sense. It was a linear, practical major that leads to a specific destination. It turns out, however, that Jost had been secretly nursing a different obsession: those expansive, emotionally charged European novels he had picked up as a teenager. That obsession triumphed somewhere in Cambridge.
He completely turned his attention to literature and history, eventually focusing on Russian and British works. By the time he was a senior, he was writing a comprehensive thesis on Nabokov’s early works, such as “The Eye” and “Despair.” You don’t just happen upon that kind of academic project. It calls for a specific temperament, such as an appetite for ambiguity and the capacity to sit inside another person’s language and identify the gaps. More than anything else, this discipline may have taught Jost how to see the odd little details in everyday life, which is fundamentally what good comedy writing is all about.
Additionally, he was given money to go to Russia and translate books that had never been translated into another language. It is truly amazing to think of a young person from Staten Island, a borough not usually connected to Slavic literary translation, sitting somewhere in Moscow going through unread manuscripts. It’s difficult to determine whether it was profoundly transformative from the outside, but it wasn’t a minor issue. It was the kind of encounter that broadens one’s understanding of the potential and capabilities of language.
For Jost, however, Harvard was about more than just academic excellence. Additionally, he served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, the university’s venerable humor publication, and by all accounts, he had a strong, almost obsessive commitment to it. In order to fulfill a Lampoon deadline, he allegedly skipped his grandfather’s funeral. That degree of commitment is both admirable and a little unsettling, and it also reveals how seriously he took comedy even back then, long before the general public had heard of him. At the time, the Lampoon’s culture included elaborate practical jokes, lengthy editorial discussions that could last up to fourteen hours, and intense internal rivalry that made writers quickly hone their instincts. It was a professional training ground in its own peculiar way.
He received a cum laude degree in 2004. He worked as a staff writer at Saturday Night Live by 2005. There is a through-line if you look for it, even though the change from Harvard Yard to the disorganized, sleep-deprived hallways of 30 Rock may seem sudden. The Lampoon presidency, the Nabokov thesis, and the months spent in Russia all contributed to the development of a writer who was at ease with complexity, could grasp a concept from several perspectives, and recognized that accuracy is essential to good writing, whether it be comedy or literature. It matters if you use the wrong word.
Jost eventually surpassed Seth Meyers’ record for Weekend Update as one of SNL’s longest-serving anchors. For many years, he and Michael Che co-wrote. He stood at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner podium, hosted the Emmy Awards, and established a career that has outlasted dozens of cast members who came after him. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that those who tend to stick around at SNL—those who are able to change, adapt, and remain relevant in the face of cultural and political shifts—often have a background that taught them to consider their words carefully before speaking.
Observing Jost now gives me the impression that Harvard influenced him in ways that go beyond his degree. He was launched by the institution, which provided him with access to the Lampoon community. It allowed him to write about politics without being overtly political. And it gave him, most likely, a deceased Russian novelist whose dark irony about human nature and deft use of language proved to be surprisingly helpful training for life at the Weekend Update desk. Not every Harvard education results in the desired outcome. Colin Jost has led to a much more intriguing place.
