Regina officially has its very own TV star!

As many of you already know, Ms. Eichler recently flew out to Culver City, California for a final shooting of the 2016 airing of Jeopardy. However, what many of you do not know is that Ms. Eichler stood out in a pool of 70,000 applicants and was chosen as one of the 400 contestants.

Applicants are chosen based upon various criteria. First, potential contestants must take an online 50 question test. Based on those results, potential players travel to Kansas City for an ‘audition’ where they play a few rounds of the game and take another test. Then, after a careful review of their test score, social skills, and multiple other “unknown” factors, the final contestants are selected.

Ms. Eichler was found to be perfect in all categories because, well, she is a rock star. Of course, this is not something she decided to do on a whim. She has wanted to be on Jeopardy for years, and took the online test 8 times before getting a call back.

“I took the online test many times,” Ms Eichler explains. “But this past time I felt like I did pretty well. There’s a time limit [for answering the questions], so a few times when I took it before I would run out of time and leave the test thinking ouch…”

But, look where she is now! Cheers to never giving up on your dream. Just to be clear, there is no “study guide” for Jeopardy. Any question in any subject is fair game, and some questions do not exactly fit into the category of ‘common knowledge’ even though they are technically supposed to.

However, for those unfamiliar with the game, there are several different sub-genres. There is kids Jeopardy, high school Jeopardy, teacher Jeopardy, general Jeopardy, and champion Jeopardy. Ms. Eichler was in the general category, which asks questions that “any college graduate” should be able to answer. Obviously, you have to be pretty dang smart to be on Jeopardy- and that’s why the Regina Dominican community is so proud!

When I imagine myself on a show like this, I get nervous merely thinking about the THOUGHT of being on national television. However, Ms. Eichler explained to me how (in the moment) being on television is actually the last thing on your mind.

“I thought I was going to be camera shy, but the studio is smaller than you’d expect and the stage is really not that big. In the moment, you forget that you’re on TV. It will be interesting to see my expressions to all of the questions,” she said.

Regardless of how much I pestered her, Ms. Eichler would not share with me how she performed. I did get her opinion on the subject matter, though. Obviously, science is Ms. Eichler’s strongest category—Ms. Eichler is a science genius. That also gave her a one-up in the game because for many people, science is their weakest category. Besides that, she was also able to hold her own in pop culture and music. Geography was supposedly the hardest for her—citing the capitols of African countries is easier said than done.

Overall, it sounded like Ms. Eichler had an amazing experience. This is something she had been dreaming of doing for years, and she explained to me that winning or losing was not nearly as important to her than actually getting on the show. She was gone from Sunday, March 13 to Friday, March 18.  She is unaware when her episode will air specifically, but she knows that it will be sometime in May. Make sure to say congratulations if you haven’t already! Go, Ms. Eichler