During the summer of 2005, also known as the “summer of Ken Jennings,” junior Alison Jenik taped Jeopardy religiously. She’d come home from class at 8 p.m. to run to the VCR and find out if the omniscient quiz whiz had lost yet.
Through persistence and studying her favorite show, the art history and classics major got a chance to join a world she’d only known through her television screen.
Jenik competed in Jeopardy College Championship Tuesday night, placing second and winning $10,000. Though she lost, Jenik was eligible to draw one of the four wild card positions set aside for the biggest money-makers who did not win their rounds. Jenik said she can’t reveal if she won a wild card until the show airs.
Tuesday night, classics associate professor Greg Staley, one of Jenik’s professors and mentors, stared at the television in frustration. The question was about Pandora, a famous character from Greek mythology who opened a box that exposed sin to the world. Jenik watched in horror as a fellow contestant buzzed in.
“I taught her Greek mythology, and she didn’t ring in!” Staley lamented. “I was screaming at the TV.”
In her defense, Jenik says she “totally knew the answer” but couldn’t buzz in in time. Contestants can’t buzz in until the lights go on. Jenik went on to correctly answer two out of five in the “Beauty and the Greek” category.
“That was the hardest part of the game, buzzing in,” Jenik said.
As a major, classics can be very beneficial to Jeopardy contestants, Staley said. A number of the questions from last night’s game were Greek topics.
“She’s a very, very bright young woman but she doesn’t want to seem that way,” Staley said. “She wants to seem like she doesn’t care.” Staley, who is also the classics undergraduate adviser, said he didn’t recognize Jenik with her hair down and brushed, without her signature backwards hat and sunglasses. She’s a “very New York, laid back kind of character,” he said.
Jenik said she doesn’t want to be known for her hat, but teachers can’t help but comment on her devotion to the blue and orange Mets cap.
“She’s the only student I’ve ever had that, despite my continual requests and teasing, refused to remove her hat,” said Steven Rutledge, who had Jenik in classes both semesters last year. “She’s irrepressible … and sometimes rather loud.”
Underneath the tough New York exterior – she is a Manhattan native whose ex-cop father now works for the Bureau of Fraud Investigation – Jenik’s tough attitude doesn’t go beyond her love for the Mets.
“She’s extremely generous,” said Kate Stattel, a classics graduate student and one of Jenik’s classmates. Stattel said Jenik would often invite a study group to her apartment and cook for them while they went over class work.
Not many people have commented to her on Jenik’s Jeopardy cameo, but back home she’s already a local celebrity. Her high school alma mater, the Covenant of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan, posted a notice on its website saying she’d be on the show a month before it aired. During the interview portion of the show, Jenik relayed a story about her senior prank when they brought a mariachi band to school. Her high school friends were ecstatic about the national television shout-out, Jenik said.
When he met her two years ago, Staley said he knew Jenik was unique. She was the first student in “about 20 years” who took both Latin and Greek as a freshman, he said.
When she tried out for Jeopardy in Boston in July, she was one of 70. They accepted nine; Jenik was the only woman, “and I’m smarter than all of them,” she said through a wide smile.
Jenik has a internship next semester at the General Assembly in Annapolis, but eventually wants to be a lawyer. She’s a good arguer, she said.
Before Final Jeopardy, Jenik was in the lead with $12,400 – $4,800 ahead of the second place contestant – but as Alex Trebek put it, “It’s anyone’s game.” The category was Continents, and Jenik wagered $2,400.
“This continent has the lowest high point and the highest low point,” Trebek read from his card. “There’s less than 7,500 feet difference.”
Jenik guessed Antarctica, and Malisha from North Carolina Central University guessed Europe. But it was Jayanth from Washington University in St. Louis who advanced as a semi-finalist with his winning answer: Australia.
As an avid Jeopardy fan, being a contestant on Jeopardy was surreal experience, and she didn’t remember most parts of the show until she watched it. While she was watching, she realized she misspelled Antarctica, which she said, while laughing, was thanks to her middle school teachers.
The Jeopardy semifinals air Nov. 14-16. The finals air Nov. 17 and 18.
As for the Pandora faux pas, Staley e-mailed her the day after the show aired. She didn’t respond. He still planned to mention it in class.
“She likes to tease, so I feel free to tease back,” he said.
Contact reporter Brianna Bond at bonddbk@gmail.com.
