New to this story posting, hear some of intern Lauren Olson's interview with Meredith Johnson by clicking on the attached sound file.

By Lauren Olson

A University of Minnesota senior from Chanhassen with a history of involvement in academic competitions since she was in the eighth grade now finds herself preparing for Jeopardy.

On April 11 and 12, 21-year-old Meredith Johnson will be at the University of Wisconsin in Madison competing in Jeopardy College Championship with 14 other students, all of them from different colleges and universities, for a $100,000 grand prize.

Johnson is a long-time Jeopardy fan and said she has watched the game show “probably ever since I was old enough to understand it.” She’s preparing for the contest, which will not be on television until May, by reading the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Wikipedia, and reviewing college sports.

“I am not much of a sports person,” she said. “They ask a lot of random college trivia… So stuff like that will be helpful.”

Whether she wins or loses, she is not allowed to tell anyone the outcome of the competition until all the episodes have aired.

“I cannot tell a soul... It’s going to be terrible, but I don’t want to risk losing my prize money, or hurting the show. There’s supposed to be suspense, that’s why it’s so much fun,” she said.

If she wins or loses, she’ll go home with some cash. Even those students who are eliminated in the first round are guaranteed to take home $5,000. If she’s eliminated in the second round, she will leave with $10,000. The third place contestant will leave with a minimum of $25,000, the runner-up a minimum of $50,000.

Asked about how she wants to spend the prize money, Johnson said she hopes to use at least some of it to travel.

"Honestly, my super dream vacation would be to go to Antarctica… But I want to go all over Europe, I also really want to go to Brazil… I have a really good friend who’s going to New Zealand, so it would be nice to visit her.… or even like China or Thailand,” she said.

Johnson plans to graduate in the spring with a triple major in linguistics, French studies, and Spanish and Portuguese. On top of that, she has also studied Italian and German at the university. “I started taking French in the eighth grade, and it fascinated me…. I just fell in love, and I started learning all sorts of languages,” she said. She intends to attend graduate school at the University of Madison to work on a master’s degree.   

This year’s Jeopardy College Championship will be the ninth championship held on a college campus.

Lauren Olson is an intern at the Chanhassen Villager and can be contacted at intern@swpub.com.