Three college students walk into a room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. There's one from Harvard, one from Columbia and one from Williams College. All are nicely dressed in business-casual twinsets, pearl necklaces and Burberry scarves and have their hair swept back by velvet headbands. Dignified—the kind with ruler-straight posture and carefully enunciated syllables. All right. So they stand at the front of this room and this other lady says—no—yells to them:
""I want to see your fists out, your thumbs moving and let's see some practice clicking! I can't see you clicking fast enough. Now tell me the answer to this: $100,000.""
""What is ‘How much money we want to win playing college Jeopardy!'"" they yell in unison.
""I can't hear you!"" she barks back. ""I want to hear studio voices!""
""What is ‘How badly we want to win!'""
Gosh, competition does strange things to people.
It can make them act completely out of character or make them totally disregard the feelings of others. All of a sudden, there is name-calling, back-stabbing and weakness-exploiting. Nice people turn mean and good people turn bad. Or at least that's what happened to me at the College Jeopardy! auditions.
A week ago I was sizing up my College Jeopardy! competition, trying to figure out their weaknesses and how exactly I could take them out. There was the big boy in a red sweater in the back of the room with a smug look on his face. Where did he go to school? ""Harvard University,"" he responded, looking for a reaction. ""That's in Cambridge, Massachusetts."" Psssh. I could take Harvard boy, I thought to myself. Pansy.
The large girl in black in front got up to say a few tidbits about herself. Political science and history major from Canada sniffed audibly every time someone got a wrong answer. Too bad her personality was as flat as a pancake.
Next one up? Another political science major—yawn—from the University of Virginia. What would she do if she won the money? ""I'd donate it to a charity that had matching corporate sponsors. That way, it'd be like I won double the money. But really, the charity would win."" Oh puh-lease, I thought to myself. There's no way she would donate it all the charity. No way. Besides, she was so skinny, I could probably just distract her with a cupcake.
I clicked my Jeopardy pen and looked around. So really, just how could I win this thing?
Everyone has a dark side. It's unleashed when they cut in front of people in the bathroom line, or when they elbow slow walkers out of their way to class or when they push people in crutches off a crowded 80 bus.
Mine just comes out in competitive situations. All the time. Even when playing kickball against a team made up of a 6-year-old, a 12-year-old and a shoeless 21-year-old. I just want to win. And last week, I just wanted to be on ""Jeopardy!""
Ok, so back to the three people in the room. At this point in the joke they have real clickers and have practiced their studio voices to exhaustion. So the fake Alex Trebek goes, ""Who was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms?""
""Who was Garfield?"" the girl from Columbia answers.
Pssh. Idiot. It was Cleveland.
The Answer: cfcieslikmis@wisc.edu. BEEP! What is where can you e-mail Caitlin if you love Jeopardy as much as she does?
