Ashley O’Mara ’10 ticked an item off of her “bucket list” – and tested her knowledge of the pyramids, former U.S. presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, and Dyson vacuums – when she appeared on Jeopardy!
O’Mara found herself on the set of the iconic gameshow as Emmy Award-winner Alex Trebek read clues from categories including “Seven Ancient Wonders,” “Beauty Trends,” and “Reverse Compound Words” to O’Mara and her competitors – an investment analyst from Alabama and a software engineer from Illinois. An English major on the Heights, O’Mara caught the trivia bug as a teenager in Baldwinsville, N.Y., appearing on WCNY’s Double Down for two years. She continued to nurture her love of knowledge and learning for its own sake at Le Moyne.
“I am not afraid of discovering new things,” she said. “One of the reasons that I love English is that it is informed by other disciplines and it informs other disciplines.”
The alumna’s journey to Jeopardy! began in Syracuse, where she is teaching and pursuing a doctorate in English at Syracuse University. She took an online quiz, scored well, and was selected to participate in a screen test in New York City. O’Mara was thrilled. However, knowing that renowned Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings applied seven times before earning more than $3 million on the show, she kept her expectations in check. She viewed the screen test as “practice” for her next audition to be a contestant. O’Mara recalled being “shocked” when she received a call inviting her to travel to Los Angeles, Calif., to appear on the program.
O’Mara only had about a month to prepare, but with the support and encouragement of her family, friends, and students, she made the most of it. She joked that she “brushed up on the constellations, dead Russian composers, and the historical details in the musical Hamilton,” and used a pen to practice clicking the buzzer used by Jeopardy! contestants. (She likely hummed the show’s theme song, Think, to herself in her head.) When she played the game before a live studio audience, O’Mara deftly answered questions about a range of topics, including the Second Amendment, Mandrill monkeys, and Russia’s Lake Baikal, ultimately coming in third place and earning $1,000.
O’Mara applied to appear on Are You Smarter than Fifth Grader? and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? However, she said that there is something classic about Jeopardy! – the variety of categories and pace of questions – that has helped it endure for nearly 55 years. She had spent so much time focusing on teaching and scholarship, and the show provided her with the opportunity to focus on her love of trivia once more. Most important, it gave her the opportunity to reconnect with friends and neighbors who reached out to congratulate her following the program.
“To re-appropriate Shakespeare, if being on game shows is the way to bring people back into your life, play on,” she said.