Jeopardy! Experience

Sitting in on two tapings of the Jeopardy! College Championships last Friday evening was very cool. It was my very first live game show experience and it was awesome to enjoy it on campus, and personally know one of the contestants! Suchita Shah, one of our campus tour guides was selected to represent UW-Madison, along with 14 other contestants from colleges and universities all over the country.

In the first taping, I watched students from the University of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Tufts battle it out. The next taping featured students from Michigan State, University of Colorado-Boulder, and a seemingly socially challenged student from Harvard. Tapings continued into Saturday, with the semi-finals and final championship round.

The episodes will air on May 5-9. So as not to ruin your viewing experience, I am not going to reveal the winner. I can tell you Suchita did wonderfully. I can also tell you that I was sitting pretty far back, so you probably won't catch any Kristin sitings, but maybe you'll catch a quick shot of me waving my towel (above) and cheering.

Admittedly, I've never been much of a Jeopardy! fan. But I certainly enjoyed the live experience, and am now a little more intrigued with the show and Alex Trebek. He was hilarious, brilliant, and extremely witty. When there were breaks in the taping, which were relatively frequent, Alex would come out into the audience and answer questions. We seriously covered everything--favorite lunch meat, worst drinking experience, favorite Indian food, best vacation spot, favorite animal, etc. It's like we go way back now.