Had a fun little adventure yesterday, heading into NYC for the second round of the Jeopardy! auditions. I went down this road
three years ago, and was glad to have the opportunity to give it another shot.
We're strongly discouraged from revealing any salacious details, but basically, they want to see if you're still smart (by giving another 50-question test, on which I think I probably only made a handful of mistakes), and if you'd play well on TV (by playing a mini-game with two other potential contestants, buzzers and all). Maggie, Robert, and Charlie, the contestant wranglers, are a lot of fun; they keep the mood light, even though we're all teetering on the edge of stress. Realistically, though, the "official" word is that everyone who makes it that far is in the contestant pool, and can be called any time in the next eighteen months.
They try out thousands of people, though, for what works out to only about 400 spots on the show every season... so the odds are pretty tough. It was actually funny for a university admissions guy to be on the other side of this process for once, if you think about it. I might be more qualified to be a contest wrangler than I would be to be an actual contestant, especially if they keep throwing literature and poetry categories up there.
Highlights:
- Did pretty well on the written test, and hopefully my charming personality during the mini-game makes up for a few silly blackouts on the exam.
- My knowledge of Jeopardy! history won me a cool J! water bottle. (Thank you, Frank Spangenberg.)
- Maggie agreed with me that a bear could totally take down a moose.
- I met a fellow baseball card collector, of all things; she works for the Animal Protective Foundation in Scotia, New York, which sounds like a wonderful organization.
A good experience, and hopefully I'll have a trip out to Los Angeles in the next eighteen months to share with you all.
Labels: jeopardy
