Worcester’s Erin Steinhart to Appear on Jeopardy! Thursday

Monday, April 13, 2015

Patrick Sargent, GoLocal Worcester Contributor

Erin Steinhart with Alex Trebek

On Thursday night, Worcester's Erin Steinhart will be a contestant on Jeopardy!. Steinhart graduated from Holy Name High School in Worcester and received her Bachelor's Degree and MA in Mental Health Counseling from Boston College. Steinhart currently lives in Boston and is the Clinical Research Operations Coordinator for the Department of Neurology at Boston Children's Hospital.

GoLocal Worcester had the exclusive opportunity to interview Steinhart prior to the airing of Thursday night's Jeopardy! episode.

How long have you wanted to be on Jeopardy! and how long did you have to wait to be on?

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be on Jeopardy. I was probably six or seven when I first saw the show, but I didn't start actively trying to get on until a few years ago.

What is the process of getting on Jeopardy?

Getting on Jeopardy! all starts with the yearly online test which is actually coming up this week. When you register for the online test you can list your potential audition city if you get selected for an in person audition. You don't get any feedback from the online test so you have no idea if you'll make it to the next round until they contact you. I took the online test in January 2014 and I was asked to come to an audition in Boston in May 2014. They have audition cities all across the country and at the audition you have to go through a paper and pencil test of about 50 questions and then you do a mock round of Jeopardy against other people in the audition to practice ringing in and answering in the form of a question. They tape this part and then they interview you sort of the way Alex does on the show. Again there is no feedback, you are only told that if you passed this part of the audition process then you will be placed in a contestant pool and can be called to be on the show anytime in the following 18 months. I got the call in January 2015, almost exactly a year from the beginning of the process.

What was your experience on Jeopardy! like?

Being on Jeopardy! was kind of surreal since I always wanted to do it but never really expected it to happen. I got to fly out to Los Angeles in the middle of this awful winter - so spending a few days in warm weather was an added perk. The taping days are long since they tape five shows a day. You sit with the other potential contestants and you aren't told when you are going on until the previous show finishes taping. You get to go through practice rounds and contestants are allowed to watch the shows as they are taping. The people behind the scenes who organize the contestants were wonderful and they do their best to make sure everyone feels as prepared as possible when they get called for their turn. I can't talk about the results of the show but it was an amazing experience and I'll just say Alex was just how I thought he would be.

Are you excited to have your episode air on Thursday?

I am excited to see the show air but I'm nervous about seeing myself on TV. The whole week will be exciting since all the people playing this week were in the contestant pool with me. It will be fun to see how all the behind the scenes stuff is edited away for the final version of the show.

Are there any big "viewing parties" set up to watch it? Is family/friends getting together?

Between work, friends and family I would need to rent out a movie theater to have a viewing party with everyone. I'm just going to have a small group of friends over to watch and some of my family members are planning to watch together. My parents were able to come to the taping with me so they have already seen it from the audience perspective.

What kind of studying did you have to do to prepare?

I tried to study by brushing up on subjects that I didn't have much experience with like opera and playwrights but there are so many subjects that the clue writers pull from there's no way to know what will be beneficial to study. There may be things that given enough time you could reason through or pull from memory but if you can't recall the information in less than 5 seconds it's not going to do you much good. Mostly I just kept reading anything and everything. One of the biggest things I practiced was ringing in to answer. When you audition they suggest that you practice just by clicking a pen since if you don't ring in in time it doesn't matter if you know the answer someone else is going to get the money.

What was your most difficult category?

I'm not allowed to discuss the content of the episode until it airs but I honestly only remember bits and pieces of the game. I'm sure it will all come back to me as soon as I see it air. I do remember being jealous of some of the categories that came up in the games prior to mine. They had some categories that fit right in with facts I knew inside and out.

Were you nervous prior to filming?

I don't think I really felt nervous until they told me it was my turn to tape but then at that point I was running on adrenaline. What you can't see from home is that in order to keep all the contestants in the frame when filming they have platforms behind the podiums that can be raised to make everyone appear about the same height. Since I was significantly shorter than my competitors my platform was raised about a foot off the ground so I was standing in an area about one square foot in high heels. Once the game started I think I had more anxiety about not falling off the platform than the game itself.

Did your Worcester education prepare you in any way for this?

I can't really say that my Worcester education prepared me for Jeopardy it was more how my parents raised me that made an impact. Education always came first and dinner time was an opportunity to spend time together as a family as well as to quiz my sister and I on trivia or to talk about new things we were reading or learning. There was always an interesting fact or mnemonic device to help us remember something for a test hanging up on the refrigerator. My mom still sends me articles on things that she thinks I should read up on. I guess my parents have always emphasized that there is a lot of knowledge in the world and there is never a reason to stop learning as much as possible.