No sooner has Katie Singh walked into Norris than she’s been recognized. She isn’t too surprised, she says, and she’s preparing for a little extra attention around campus.
“Katie! You’re going to be on Jeopardy!”
The Weinberg sophomore appears as a contestant on a college special of the game show Jeopardy! today at 3:30. It’s already filmed — but it still hasn’t hit her.
“That’s only sinking in now, that college Jeopardy! has started airing,” she says. “It’s so strange to think about.”
She’s been watching Jeopardy! with her family since she was a kid, Singh says. As she got older, she would get more and more answers right, often outsmarting finalists at the Final Jeopardy question. Being a contestant was never a dream of hers, but the thought crossed her mind.
In February, she took an online test to see if she’d qualify to appear on the show as part of the College Championship. She was invited back to audition in downtown Chicago in May, and in September received a phone call inviting her to come play the game.
“10,000 people took the online test, 250 were invited back to audition, and of those, 15 were selected for the show,” she says. “I didn’t really expect to hear back from them.”
Singh and her parents flew to L.A. for the show’s filming in October. She says she was in the midst of midterms leading up to the show, so she wasn’t able to devote much time to practicing. Studying and writing papers took precedence, but she still found time to review old episodes just in case.
The Jeopardy! experience was “surreal,” she says; the set seems much smaller in person and time seems to fly while taping. In her Facebook profile picture, Singh is smiling next to Alex Trebek.
“He was personable, he would make jokes,” she says. “But when it came to actually interacting with the contestants during the show, he was more concerned with his lines.”
One of the most memorable aspects of Singh’s experience was meeting the contestants from other schools across the country. Though they spent only two days together, Singh says the group became incredibly close and still keeps in touch.
“Each night after the Jeopardy! game, we’d make fun of each other for wrong responses,” she says. “It was a lot of fun hanging out with them and meeting all these people I never would have met otherwise.”
The camaraderie behind the scenes made it a little less stressful to be on camera and under pressure, says Singh. To her, contestants seemed less preoccupied with winning and focused more on how to play the game.
“It wasn’t a competitive atmosphere,” she says. “It was really more about playing the game and not playing against each other, but playing against the Jeopardy! game board. We were all rooting for each other and hoping that everyone did well. “
The girl who recognized her at Norris was a “casual acquaintance” from an old class, Singh explains, but she’s not the first person to get back in touch since word got out about her Jeopardy! appearance. Singh says old friends have been contacting her through Facebook to wish her luck on the show.
She’s not sure how she feels about her new claim to fame, Singh says. It doesn’t feel real yet.
“The other contestants have found random blog posts and Twitter posts about themselves,” she says. “People are going to be saying that about me.”
Still, she says she thinks the excitement will die down quickly.
“It’ll last for a little bit, but then life will start happening again,” she says.
Jeopardy! didn’t teach Singh any life lessons, she says, but it offered the experience of a lifetime she’ll never forget. The friendships, the trivia and the photo op with “Professor Trebek” — it’s a rare opportunity.
“Not very many other people can say that they were on Jeopardy!,” she says. “This is definitely going on my resume.”