By Steve Seepersaud
Though some people seem naturally gifted with the ability to rattle off random, trivial facts in everyday conversation, it’s not something you’re born with. Conor Quinn ’11 (left in photo above) would say it comes with practice and he has a $50,000 check to prove it.
Quinn, a ninth- and 10th-grade world history teacher at Troy Prep High School near Albany, N.Y., appeared last month on three episodes of the Teachers Tournament edition of Jeopardy! He advanced to what turned out to be an all-upstate final, finishing second to an educator from New Paltz, and ahead of a Bowie, Md., teacher who graduated from Binghamton High School.
As a student at Binghamton University, Quinn tried out for the college edition of Jeopardy! and didn’t advance past the Philadelphia audition. He didn’t give up, but never imagined it would take nearly 10 years to get on the show. He auditioned in New York City in February, didn’t hear anything for a while, forgot about it and later got the call to fly out to Hollywood.
“They do the whole thing over two days and it’s so overwhelming,” Quinn said. “There’s lots of paperwork and you go over the rules. I was really nervous when I was playing. Before I knew it, a quarter of the first game was over and I was in last place panicking.
“When you watch at home, you don’t realize how fast it goes. Your score fluctuates based on what you do, so you don’t want to ring in and just call out an answer. At home, you don’t hesitate because you can’t lose money. There were some questions where my friends asked, ‘Why didn’t you ring in?’ There are two other players and you don’t always get to answer the questions you know. You have to get used to the frustration.”
Quinn says he has always been good at trivia, but made flash cards to quiz himself on potential question categories where he might struggle, such as Shakespeare, famous artists and musical composers. This actually helped him answer a Final Jeopardy question correctly.
He organized a watch party at a sports bar for his initial appearance on the show, thinking he’d get 50 people tops. More than three times as many people came, and the place was rocking as if the Yankees were in the World Series.
“Every time I got a question right, people would cheer even if it was an easy question,” Quinn said. “When I got the Final Jeopardy question right and I won, the place went crazy. Seeing myself on TV was weird, but seeing it with friends and family, and people I hardly knew who just wanted to watch it — that was really fun.”
Because the episodes were taped in early April, Quinn had to keep the results a secret for more than a month. His students didn’t seem to understand what a non-disclosure agreement means or how much money Quinn was playing for.
“My students were trying to get clues out of anything I would say,” Quinn said. “They looked at my shoes and said, ‘Are those new? Did you just buy them?’ They weren’t new. They had already been scuffed up.”
“High school kids don’t have any concept of money. They’d say, ‘if you lose in the first round, you still get $5,000. You could retire!’”
