From the Onion AV Club interview with Demetri Martin, on working for The Daily Show:

AVC: What allowed you to transition from intern to correspondent?

DM: It was a pretty simple process. All I had to do was leave the show, work at temp jobs, then become a full-time proofreader, do hundreds of stand-up shows, some comedy festivals, a couple of writing jobs, some screenplays, two pilot scripts, and about 20 minutes of Pilates. Then, a mere eight years later, I returned to the show to become the nation’s least relevant fake reporter.

It’s never as easy as it looks.