Alysia Wood quit school in 1998 to become a comedian after failing her first improv class at Bellevue College.

It was a dubious career move, but she doesn’t regret it.

“I love my life,” she said. “I love what I do. The hard days are not very hard, and the good days are amazing.”

One of Wood’s better days came Jan. 24, when the Improv comedy franchise named her “America’s Next Funniest” comedian during a competition at Harrah’s Las Vegas.

That award entitled her to a six-night paid run at the casino from April 6-11.

Sounds like success, but now this Bellevue native isn’t sure how to handle her achievement.

Wood described the initial feeling while sitting on the front porch of her L.A. home, having accidentally locked herself out just one day after returning from Vegas.

“I had like winners guilt,” she said. “I’ve never won anything, so it was kind of weird. I always sit at the losers table, and I like it. That’s where all the fun happens.”

Wood’s Improv victory is likely to put her back on the club circuit, which is where she’s wanted to be after working mostly college gigs – and as a mystery shopper – for the past several years.

“I have (Improv founder) Budd Friedman calling me on my cell phone now,” she said. “He’s a comedy legend.”

That’s a dream come true for a girl who was addicted to renting standup videos as a teenager.

Wood first cut her teeth in Seattle at Giggles with a standup experience she describes as “horrible.” She was shaking and admittedly not funny, even after working on her routine for six months.

“Standup is something you can’t really prepare for,” she said. “You just have to get up and try it.”

Wood was serving tacos to the likes of Bill Gates at a local fast-food joint and taking classes to become a 9-1-1 dispatcher when she finally found her comedic mojo at Comedy Underground in Seattle’s International District. It was there that she first got a crowd rolling with laughter.

“I knew form that moment on that everything I had worked for with college and everything was going to go down the tubes,” she said. “I was in the process of having a healthy, functioning, normal life, but I decided I was going to be a comedian.”

Wood’s comedy style exudes her neurotic, self-deprecating sense of humor. She makes light of hardship and family dysfunction, talking openly about how she grew up poor in a predominantly wealthy town and spent time at the Fairfax mental hospital in Kirkland.

“I tell people that I am from Seattle because I got sick of explaining, ‘I’m not from Bellevue, the hospital. I’m from Bellevue, the city,'” she said. “The mental institution I’m from is Fairfax.

“I don’t just talk about negative stuff, but how it gets better, too.”

It’s a fitting schtick for the type of woman who flunks college standup only to become “America’s Next Funniest” comedian.

Wood is working with Comedy Underground to book dates for a homecoming tour in April.