When I arrived at the airport in Madison, I stepped off the plane and immediately espied a stack of Brett Favre t-shirts for sale.  Clearly, I was in Wisconsin!  My driver was a proud UW-Madison alum, and he entertained me with fun facts about the school.  On the way to the hotel, I spotted the Jeopardy! Brain Bus in a parking lot.

I checked into the Doubletree, where the entire Jeopardy! staff was staying.  The following morning, I went downstairs and met some of the other contestants for the first time.  Over breakfast, we introduced ourselves and even discovered that we had some mutual friends!  "Do you realize that one of us sitting here might wind up with $100,000?!" someone asked.  I joked that the student who would eventually win the competition was probably still upstairs in his or her hotel room, furiously cramming flash cards.
 
Prior to meeting them, I wasn't really sure what to expect of my 14 competitors--whether they'd keep to themselves or be really intense and intimidating--but I found that they were all friendly and extroverted.  We were all genuinely excited to have been selected for Jeopardy!, and we looked forward to the day's events.  From the get-go, we bonded over our unique situation instead of looking upon one another as competition.  
 
Soon, we boarded a shuttle and drove a block and a half to the Kohl Center.  As we walked into the "green room" (a converted locker room where we would be sequestered for the majority of the weekend), we caught a glimpse of the stage and Jeopardy! screen.  It was decorated with the colorful banners of our respective colleges.
 
We filled out some more tax forms and paperwork and sat in the makeup chairs.  Eventually, we walked to the actual stage, and saw the massive 4,000 seat audience configuration.  Onstage, reporters, stage managers, and crew members bustled about as cameras fluidly swooped through the air.  It was a surreal experience: we simultaneously saw and heard Alex Trebek on the mounted television screens and on the actual stage. 
 
After a few moments, he came over to introduce himself to us.  In person, Alex Trebek behaves exactly as you might imagine him: he is articulate, witty, soft-spoken, and a consummate professional.  Throughout the course of the weekend, he displayed his humorous side to the audience.  To me, he came across as a normal person--that is, a normal person who just happens to be an American icon by virtue of his profession!
 
We spent a good deal of time filming promotional videos and interviews.  I'd like to think that I came across as a regular person, but I fear that I was unbelievably cheesy in them!  At one point, I posed for a photo with Alex.  "Ahh, this is the Katie Winter of my discontent," he declared as he stood next to me.  We filmed two promotional snippets for local stations.
 
At the rehearsal game, we spent time learning how to use the light pens to sign our names and write in Final Jeopardy! wagers and answers.  At my audition back in January, I had practiced using the signaling buzzer.  However, I still encountered difficulty with it.  There's some estimated statistic along the lines that says 90% of the time, two out of the three contestants knows the correct answer to a given question.  It's simply a matter of who manages to buzz in first.  Thus, Jeopardy! really is a game of hand-eye coordination, strategy, and sheer luck.  You might be the smartest person in the world, but you'll never master the game unless you have fast thumbs.
 
Mind you, I failed PeeWee tennis when I was four years old because my instructor determined that I had "no hand-eye coordination."  So, it's a miracle that I was even to buzz in a fraction of the time!  One of the most frustrating aspects of the game is when you know that you have the correct answer on the tip of your tongue and the person next to you hits the buzzer a nanosecond earlier.  Simultaneously, you have to fret about the enhance lights on either side of the Jeopardy! screen, the 5 seconds you have to respond, and how you appear on camera.  As you answer your question, you should already be figuring out what category and dollar amount to call next.  Jeopardy! engages your brain and your body.  It's actually pretty physically draining to play the game.  It also goes by in a flash: you sort of black out after you play a round, and it takes you several hours to even recall the answers and categories.
 
However, I felt that my rehearsal went reasonably well, and I looked forward to the following day, when I would officially make my Jeopardy! debut.

Katie plays her quarter-final game on May 8.
Come back on May 9 to read her next blog entry!