Adventures in Early Modernity

Well, it’s been over a month, both since I last posted here and since my Jeopardy! episodes aired. I really regret the radio silence, but I’ve been so busy with my MPhil coursework and research for my dissertation that I’ve not been able to properly sit down and write a post about my Jeopardy! experience until today. I really wanted to include my great Second Chance run in this post, but as I’m writing this, the post is already long enough as is, so I’ll leave that for the next post. This one will just focus on my first Jeopardy! filming experience last May.

The first quiz competition I ever entered was a local qualifying competition for the National History Bee a decade ago. I was in sixth grade and just 11. I was an immature, socially awkward child with autism and who struggled with my repressed homosexuality and incipient depression. Needless to say, I was not a happy bunny, nor someone who had friends. As in so many things, it was my mom who encouraged me to enter that History Bee competition. “Try it and see how you like it,” she said. In the end, I took to the History Bee like a duck to water. Why? Primarily, it was because the competition was all about history. The National History Bee, as well as its many regional divisions, is an elementary, middle, and high school competition which quizzes contestants on their knowledge of history. It’s like the spelling bee, but instead of asking you how to spell “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”, they read out a series of increasingly easy clues all about history and see how early in the question you know the answer. There’s also a team competition, the National History Bowl, which has its own regional divisions and is basically the same thing but in a quiz bowl (i.e. teams) format. As someone who had (and still has) an autistic hyperfixation on history, the prospect of getting quizzed on my knowledge of my favorite field was, and still is, very exciting.

I’m only mentioning the National History Bee/Bowl because of the fact that I was really into these quiz competitions in middle and high school, at least until COVID disrupted everything. From sixth grade, when I ended up winning the Elementary division of the National History Bee, to tenth grade, where I placed third in the JV division, I had a blast and won a few thousand dollars along the way. I also got really into the state-wide quiz bowl competition for Florida, the Commissioner’s Academic Challenge, and my knowledge of history and literature helped the Orange County team win twice. Sadly, COVID prevented us from getting any more wins.

COVID disrupted everything enough that by the time I graduated and went to Oxford, I thought my time in quiz competitions was pretty much over. But just a month after I started my BA at Oxford, my college (University College) announced that it was looking for a team to represent them in University Challenge. University Challenge, for my non-UK readers, is a hit ITV quiz show, notorious for its very difficult-to-answer questions, which pits two teams, each representing a UK university or Oxford/Cambridge college, against each other., This isn’t a post about University Challenge, but some context is needed. It was my first time on TV, and together with my teammates, we even managed to win a game! The fact we lost the subsequent one didn’t take away from my ultimate excitement at having been on TV and won a round of a game show. My family and friends, along with people I’d never even talked to, were unbelievably excited and thrilled, which couldn’t help but boost my own mood as well. Again, I thought that my quiz career was done. As it turns out, I was wrong again.

Fast forward to August 2023. It had been nearly seven months since my second (and last) University Challenge episode aired, and I was bored out of my mind. I’d finished my primary source research for my dissertation. Moreover, with my younger brother and friends from high school having gone back to university, I would be left alone until I went back to Oxford to start my third and final year in October. The prospect of spending the next two months at home, with nothing to do and nobody to hang out with, felt like my own personalized Hell. I imagine it was in the midst of this ennui that I took my mom’s advice: namely, to try out for Jeopardy! I’d definitely tried out for Jeopardy! before this, taking the Anytime Test to start the process, but for whatever reason, I didn’t progress to the next stage on that attempt. The failure of that attempt definitely sapped my confidence, but something clicked that day in August. I didn’t have anything better to do, and if I did go on … well, I’d be watched by an audience of nearly ten million people and get to win some money along the way. It was a tempting offer. 

I got invited to an online audition for Jeopardy! the next month, much to my delight. I hadn’t thought I’d answered enough questions correctly to even make it to the next round, to be honest. But I didn’t dare hope that I might make it onto Jeopardy!, even though I’d gotten a step closer. If I didn’t make the cut, better to prepare myself now for (what I thought was) the inevitable disappointment than build myself up too much. I thought it went well, but with Oxford starting soon, Jeopardy! was pushed to the back of my mind by the sheer amount of work I had. But then, at the end of October 2023, I was invited to another audition! While the previous two auditions had tested my knowledge, this one would test my game-playing skills. As before, I was cautiously excited, and after my audition the next month, I once more focused on my studies.

And then, it was late March 2024. I was heading with my parents to dinner, my brother already having returned to Australia for another semester. And then, I got a call from Sony. I didn’t dare hope, but what else could it be? So I picked up the phone, and to my astonishment, they told me I was officially part of the contestant pool! I would be filming for Jeopardy! that May. I somehow balanced studying for my four final exams, which were together worth 4/7 my total BA degree grade, with my practice for Jeopardy! Somehow, I didn’t fail at either. Finally, on May 5, after a nearly twelve-hour flight from London, I arrived in Los Angeles. My parents had flown out there to support me and be in the audience during the filming. I was so glad for this, even if my brother couldn’t be there on account of it being term time in Australia. It sounds trite, but I really did draw strength from them being there, supporting me, and later, being able to see them in the audience. It reminded me of my middle and high school quiz competitions, each one of which they’d gone to. It was just like that, I told myself, trying not to think about the live audience which would watch me, or the millions of people who would watch when my episode aired. 

We did manage to go visit some places the next day, like the La Brea Tar Pits, but finally, the morning of May 7 dawned. It’s been eight months since then, and so I don’t really remember my exact state of mind, if I’m going to be honest. I do remember a giddy thrill at being on TV and getting to win some money, as well as a slowly increasing terror as my anxiety kind of went haywire. But I’d agreed to be part of this, and the moment was here. All I could do was face it with bravery, dignity, and as much quiz competition skills as I could muster. My parents, after all, had already told me how proud they were that I’d got to this position. All I needed to do, they said, was try my best. They would be proud of me even if I lost. It feels silly, but I did need to hear this. My perfectionist tendencies mean I really beat myself up when I don’t “win” or get assessed as having given a good performance on something. So I willed myself to accept the possibility of defeat and just do the best I could. Down the elevator of the hotel we went, before getting an Uber to the Sony Pictures studio.

When we arrived at the studio, I said goodbye to my parents; their call time, as part of the audience, was later than mine. As soon as I got past the gate of the studio, I saw a woman at least a decade older than me also walking to the area for Jeopardy! contestants. We started talking, and I was delighted to find out she was an archivist, given my love for history. It turned out she was an academic – another similarity, given my dream of joining academia! When we got there, we met up with the other contestants who would film their episodes that day. It turns out Jeopardy! films five episodes per day, with some rest breaks and time for lunch. We filed into the green room and were given some briefings by the producers. So far, so good. But then, I heard a sentence that made my anxiety skyrocket: “Welcome back to our eight-game champion, Adriana Harmeyer!” I looked at the woman I’d met when I entered the studio lot and realized she was Adriana.

Now, fair play to Adriana, none of the nervousness I felt at that moment was her fault, and she was nothing but pleasant to me during the entire filming process. She was also, as I’ll describe below, a formidable player. But while I knew there was a possibility I’d be facing a repeat champion, I would never have predicted I’d be facing someone who’d won eight games straight! So after some practice rounds and the stylist rejecting all of my other outfits I’d brought, it was back to the green room to await our call. I wasn’t in the first group – nor, as it turns out, was I in the second. In both games, I prayed someone would beat Adriana so I could face people equally new and unexperienced with Jeopardy! In both cases, the universe didn’t heed my pleas. And then, on the third game, I was called. I’d be facing Adriana and a young Michigan lawyer named Connor Townsend. With a deep breath, I steeled myself and headed out into the studio.

Perhaps because it was so stressful, I don’t really remember the specifics of what it was like to stand there at my podium under the intense studio lights. The audience, including my parents, were on my left hand side, and the cameras and a board which displayed the questions were straight in front of me. I told myself to just pretend like it was a normal quiz bowl competition, just like I’d been so good at years ago. I played well both rounds, but some of the categories were beyond my knowledge, like the second, “Double Jeopardy!” round category on “Numerically Named Musicians and Bands”. I played well, answering many questions before other people could get them, but Adriana played better. She managed to answer nearly half of the questions, getting none wrong and always maintaining a lead I couldn’t quite overcome.

And then, it was time for Final Jeopardy! In this final round, all the contestants make their wagers, only knowing the categories of the question. Once the wagers are made (and in the filming, they give you as much time as you need to work out the math), the question is revealed and you have thirty seconds to write down an answer. The category, as it turned out, was “Famous Names”. After two minutes of struggling to calculate my optimal wager, the article I’d read the night before about the math behind it having flown out of my head, I went for broke and wagered $15,000 of my $16,400. 

The question itself was quite confusing: “Vying with Eiffel, this engineer wanted to create big; an admiring account said the obelisk of Luxor is too short to be a spoke.” For about twenty seconds, I was stumped and realized I was about to spectacularly crash out in front of millions of viewers. But then, I connected the dots. Spokes. Wheels. Obelisks. Big. Big wheels. Ferris wheels. Ferris? I wrote it down with seconds to spare. As it turns out, I was correct. But it didn’t matter. Adriana, of course, had gotten it correct, won her eleventh game, and thus beat me by $1,600. As second place, I got $3,000. 

However, in the post-game briefing, the host, Ken Jennings, told me that my performance was so good that I’d made a very strong case for returning in the Jeopardy! Second Chance Tournament. It was a nice thought, one which comforted the blow of my narrow loss and assured me that I’d done my best. I’d made my parents, brother, family, and friends proud. That was what mattered. And that’s what I thought of as I left the studio, consigning the idea of another Jeopardy! appearance to the realm of daydreams. But fate (and the Jeopardy! producers) had different plans. To find out what those are, stick around for part 2, coming soon!