Who Is.... Jill Bunzendahl Chimka
I began my preparation for Jeopardy! at a young age. My father is infamous for his corny jokes and love of obscure bits of knowledge that he readily shares with everyone. Trivial Pursuit and the new version of Jeopardy both came out in the early 80s and were a staple of my childhood. Since my father was too cheap to spring for a set of encyclopedias, I sat around reading the atlas, which gave me a very good knowledge of Geography --- one of my best Jeopardy! categories. In school I always loved it when we had some type of trivia game, I was always very nervous, but very competitive. In the eighth grade I won a trivia contest in my class and received a gift certificate to a bookstore so naturally I bought an upgraded atlas --- what a nerd! As I got older I continued watching Jeopardy! and playing Trivia Pursuit with people always commenting that I should try out for the show.
When I was in college I read in Mademoiselle magazine a horoscope that would convince me of my destiny! It said "you know a little bit about a lot of things, you would make a great Jeopardy! contestant, but your nerves would get in the way". I had to admit that this all seemed pretty accurate --- especially the part about my nerves --- I had such a fear of public speaking that I majored in Speech Communication in college to help me get over it.
I registered to try out for Jeopardy! in Washington, DC in about 1996 when I was in grad school at the University of Virginia, but never received a call to try out. After grad school I moved all over the country and then ended up in DC in August of 2000. In the spring of 2001 I saw that Jeopardy! tryouts were coming to DC --- I registered online and then received a phone call that I had been selected to tryout in June. Needless to say I was a nervous wreck for the weeks preceding the tryouts --- my fiancé‚ (at the time), Cory, drove me to the hotel for tryouts with me on the verge of hyperventilating.
I was elated after my name was read for passing the test --- in my group we had about 13 out of 75 pass. I didn't do so well on the mock Jeopardy! game until the category of Spam came up which I, for some reason, had a good knowledge of. So I guess I was pretty lucky --- passing the test and getting called on the first try.
After trying out for the show I was just happy that I passed the test - I had been so nervous for the tryouts I couldn't imagine what would happen if I actually had to tape a game. I got called in January, 2002 to tape in the beginning of February. It took me over a week to call the contestant coordinator back because I was so nervous and actually considered not taping the show. Obviously I made the wise move and decided to make the trip to LA. Between my tryout date and taping date, I had gotten married and switched from Jill Bunzendahl to Jill Chimka --- for the show I decided to go by Jill Bunzendahl Chimka (no hyphen) to give props to my family for their role in preparing me for Jeopardy! --- so in real life I do not actually go by Jill Bunzendahl Chimka.
I taped my shows on February 4 and 5 - my husband and I were leaving for Barbados on February 7. He couldn't get off of work for an entire week --- so I brought my sister, Melissa, and my friend Sheree as my guests. I went in to the games hoping only that I would be around for Final Jeopardy! - as long as Alex didn't have to give me the boot for being in a deficit situation I would have been happy with my performance. They announced that these shows would air the week of May 27th --- which just happens to be my birthday and 27 is my lucky number --- so I was feeling pretty good.
I taped the second game of the day --- a pretty good spot to be in --- you don't have to go first, but don't have to sit around waiting all day. The first game was pretty much a blur for me. I remember Alex coming up with a non-rehearsed interview question about speech problems that I managed to smile and try to joke my way through. I ended up in second place going in to Final Jeopardy! I got lucky and was the only one to get the question correct. I then taped three more shows that day --- all of which are kind of a blur. On my second show I got Geography and Literature as my Final Jeopardy --- as soon as I saw Geography I decided to bet big --- I got it correct and had my biggest payday that game. I got lucky and had some really easy Final Jeopardys in my run --- I ended up with 4 out of 5 correct FJs. (Later in the tapings I played a woman who was obviously much more competitive than me --- before we went on stage she turned to me and said "You're going down" and I don't think she was joking around! All I could think was "Is she trash talking about Jeopardy?" Thankfully, I managed to beat her.)
So after taping four games in one day and winning about $85,000, I called my husband to tell him how I had done so far --- needless to say, he was ecstatic. I was so excited about winning plus my sister was snoring so loudly that I got no sleep that night. I went in to tape my fifth show on Tuesday morning. I did a really lousy job and competed against two great contestants. I couldn't ring in to save my life and made several careless errors such as Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. for Douglas Fairbanks - doh!
Anyway --- I was trailing badly going into Final Jeopardy, the category was France --- which I felt like was a neutral category for me. I had no idea what the answer was, I was obviously not going to win the game --- so when the music started to play I thought I would at least give a memorable answer --- hence the infamous "Sorry, Cory no Jag" response. I thought it was pretty clever, but Alex did not seem amused. A woman named Shari from a suburb of DC ended up winning --- she happened to have majored in French in college. I was excited for her and glad to be done taping --- even though I left without a Jag!
I got back to DC and then left for Barbados. Needless to say we had a great vacation, since I, being the usual cheapskate, was actually up for spending some money.
When the shows aired, we had a party every night at a different friend's house to watch the show. My fourth show aired on a Friday night --- so we invited about fifty people to watch the show at one of our favorite bars. I ended up watching my horrendous fifth game - which aired on Monday (I was hoping people would forget to watch after the weekend) --- with a bottle of Boone's Farm Lemonade to help ease the pain.
This time around I was much less nervous and viewed the Tournament of Champions as icing on the cake. My husband got to come with me this time, my expenses were covered and I was guaranteed at least $5,000 so there's really no downside. I was excited to meet all the people I had seen on TV, but my husband and I were especially excited about meeting Eric whom we both thought was a pretty cool and entertaining player.
I met Trevor Norris at the airport in DC, everyone else I met the morning of the tapings. We all met up in the lobby and rode the bus together. Everyone was fun and outgoing, there was a lot more joking around and conversing than when I was on the first time. And I was actually able to eat the food in the Green Room since I wasn't as nervous.
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