Answer: She traveled to Chicago to compete in the final round of auditions for College Jeopardy.
Buzz in: What is, what I did last weekend?
That's right my fellow Badgers, this year on the ""Jeopardy College Championship"" you may see me wearing an oversized Wisconsin sweatshirt standing next to Alex Trebek.
It started out as a quasi-joke. ""Wouldn't it be fun?"" I mused, ""To write about how to audition for a game show?"" So I went to the Jeopardy website, mere days before the deadline, to try out for the college level. It's an easy process: you sign up for an audition time and complete a 50-question timed test. So many students sign up to take the online test that it is actually harder to make it from the first audition to the finals, than to make it from the finals to the show.
I took my online test, had some fun and sat back to write and reflect on what I thought was the end of my Jeopardy experience. A few weeks later, I was perusing my email during lecture. There it was—an e-mail from ""Jeopardy SPE Studios."" Upon opening, I discovered that I had qualified and was selected to compete in the finals.
Bring on the hyperventilation! I never thought my column idea would actually put me on the show. As word got around, my friends and co-workers expressed their regards, which only made me queasy. ""Congratulations!"" they would say, ""You're totally going to make it on the show and meet Alex! Don't even worry about the finals!""
The finals weren't worrying me at all, but what if I actually made it on the show? Not only would I totally embarrass myself standing next to the geniuses from Harvard and MIT—I stood the risk of embarrassing myself in front of everyone I know. There would be nothing more awful than having a ""Basic American History"" category, as a History major, and getting all the questions wrong. My podium would go dark during Final Jeopardy, as I would be in negative digits, and all of my professors would hang themselves in shame.
So there I was last Saturday in a room with 20 people I knew had to be smarter than me. We took another 50-question test, had a personality interview and were actually able to play a mock round of Jeopardy. When I played, all of the categories fell in my favor. I got things such as Astrology and U.S. Capitols. Somehow, I ended up beating the pre-med from Yale and the economics major from Berkley.
My fears of looking stupid were stifled when I realized that Jeopardy wasn't about being a genius â_ it was about knowing random facts and lucking out with categories.
Only 15 of the 250 finalists make it on the show. I have a pretty good shot, but so do a handful of other kids. A week ago, I just wanted to get the finals over with and get back to a world where I answered in a sentence and not the form of a question.
Now I hope I can get on College Jeopardy— if only to prove that a state school can kick Harvard's ass.
