Jeopardy! « The University of Georgia Graduate School (2024)

Katie Pieper, a doctoral student in genetics, is involved with campus organizations such as UGA Women in Science and the Athens Science Cafe. But nothing quite compares with her turn on the game show “Jeopardy!” – when a dream came true.

It doesn’t matter to Katie Pieper that she came in second on a “Jeopardy!” segment that aired this past July. She won, she says, with a genial grin and a shake of her dark brown hair.

What matters, Pieper says, is that she got to check something off her bucket list. A big something. And her parents were with her, sitting in the Culver City, CA studio audience to watch as she was filmed alongside fellow contestants responding to show host Alex Trebek. (Trebek ad libs, she confides, unscripted except for the posed questions. “He is actually smart.”)

Since her youth, Pieper has corralled her parents to watch a game popular among lovers of trivia and information. “I had been watching ‘Jeopardy!’ since I can remember,” she says. That is, until the last five years while a doctoral student, given she doesn’t have access to cable television in Athens.

Fortunately, too, Pieper is about to check another bucket list item off: earning a doctorate in genetics. Fruit flies are the basis of her research.

Pieper is, after all, a scientist, a woman with a mind for facts, and she has enjoyed trivia all her life. Fortunately, she also possesses an excellent memory. “I used to play Brain Quest on road trips,” Pieper says of her younger years. “I was on the Academic quiz bowl team at my school.” Games are a form of relaxation for her.

“Jeopardy!”, however, was the ultimate experience. “I felt it was an experience I had to have,” she confesses, her eyes lighting.

She explains the mechanics of becoming a game show contestant. First, Pieper took the online prequalifying tests in order to become selected as a potential “Jeopardy!” contestant. “It’s something like, oh, 50 questions. If you do well enough, they invite you in for a personal audition.” Pieper did well enough, although she says, “I actually did not prepare at all.”

In the scheme of things, “Jeopardy’s!” premise seemed simple enough to her. She recognized a certain pattern to the questions posed whenever Pieper watched the weekly program. “I knew what it was going to be like…I was, like, “I’ll go see what happens- because the thing with Jeopardy is, the answer is usually the most obvious thing.”

Long after taking the pre-qualifying online “Jeopardy!” exam, Pieper received a call to audition in June 2015. It was, unfortunately, just as she and her family were enjoying a rare vacation on Tybee Island outside Savannah, Ga. But Pieper determinedly hopped in her car and made the Atlanta audition. This was not Pieper’s first experience auditioning for the game show- she had previously attempted to make the cut for the collegiate version and it had not gone as well. “I had previously auditioned for ‘College Jeopardy!’, and did not feel good about it.”

She recalls leaving her Ohio family for the hurried trip and finding plenty of Jeopardy hopefuls upon arrival. “There were probably 40 people auditioning in Atlanta on that Wednesday. After the audition, I felt good.”

She returned to Tybee where her family awaited- and this time, Pieper felt positive about her audition performance as she reviewed the day’s events. She doesn’t recall specific questions from the audition, apart from a question about the 19th Amendment. She describes the experience. “With the audition, they have everyone in a conference room. They have a big screen and project a ‘Jeopardy!’ board. You do another written test and you practice questions. And then, they call people up by threes and you play a ‘Jeopardy!’ game.”

Pieper realized that most importantly they sought contestants with the aplomb to compete. “They want to know that you are good at the game.”

In the interim following the Atlanta audition, Pieper didn’t even watch the game show but burrowed into her graduate research. The months flew by, she explains tongue-in-cheek, pun intended. “The overall goal of my research with flies is to investigate how genetic conflict affects sex chromosome evolution,” she says.

‘Specifically, I study a selfi sh X-chromosome found in a North American species called Drosophila neotestacea. The selfish X promotes its own transmission to the next generation by killing the Y-bearing sperm in the testes of male flies that carry it. These males then only have daughters which also carry the selfish X. I look at how this selfish behavior has affected the molecular evolution of the X-chromosome in this species.”

Almost an entire year passed before she heard anything further from the show executives concerning her audition. The call came finally on April 10th last year, as Pieper was working in a windowless lab room on campus. She learned she had made the cut- she was going to become a “Jeopardy!” contestant. “It was a little surreal,” she says. So were the terms- Pieper would have to be in California within two weeks if she was to compete.

”They asked if I could come to Los Angeles April 25-26.” But there was never a question she would accept if selected- it took her less than a second to say yes. Pieper immediately called her family and asked if her parents wanted to come and see her compete. They did.

Given her lack of cable access she had to be resourceful. “I watched all the episodes I could watch on YouTube.” And, Pieper adds, “I actually did study this time.” Her boyfriend would review potential questions with her.

The competitive Pieper actually relished the challenge, says she couldn’t wait for her turn on the stage. “I wasn’t super worried about it; I wasn’t nervous until Sunday night and the taping was on Monday.” She had visited some tourist sites and enjoyed a celebratory dinner on the town with herfolks. Then, indigestion struck. She had an uncomfortable night’s rest before her day of taping on April 25th.