Pirate takes campus editor out of ‘Jeopardy’

When confronted with a pirate, it is always best to watch your back, arrrgh, me matey.

An encounter with Capt. Henry Morgan, for example, took Meg Wall-Wild right out of the “Jeopardy!” television game show.

“The question was, ‘This Welsh pirate was known to raid the coast of the Pearl Islands.’ I figured it was Capt. Kidd, thinking the double ‘d’ was Welsh,” she says.

Happily, Wall-Wild hadn’t quit her day job as an editor and graphic designer in the School of Human Ecology and UW Extension’s Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars, which honored her in 1999 with an award for exceptional service. She’s been at that post since 1995, after starting her career as a cashier at UW Hospital and Clinics. SoHE and UW Extension friends and colleagues celebrated her TV appearance by watching it together when it aired Jan. 13 on channel 15.

That segment, taped in mid-November in Los Angeles, was the culmination of an arduous process that began a full year before, when Wall-Wild clicked on “Be a Contestant” during a visit to the “Jeopardy” Web site, http://www.jeopardy.com/.

“I’d wanted to be on ‘Jeopardy’ as long as there’s been a ‘Jeopardy,'” since the 1960s, she says. The application process involved a written test, taken at the Drake Hotel in Chicago; an audition; several rounds of callbacks; and, in the meantime, a huge amount of practice.

“My husband made a buzzer for me. I’m on my second one now, and have gotten very fast. I also have the computer game ‘Jeopardy’ and was in training constantly,” Wall-Wild says.

“Since I am such a visual learner, I also bought a chalkboard at the university surplus store. If I write things down, I retain them much longer,” she adds.

Other “Jeopardy”-related purchases included a world map, expressly for learning the names of the former states in the old Soviet Republic. “I call them ‘stans,'” she says.

“I have been reading encyclopedias, and people lent me trivia games. I even read sport almanacs to fill a smoking hole in my pop culture education. My mother-in-law sent me daily e-mail lessons — five per day — on classical music and opera, never my forte. I truly believe this has become a team sport.”

Wall-Wild’s team sport began as a family activity. She grew up in a Chicago household where reading the encyclopedia was recreation. “I’m pretty unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit,” she confesses.

Despite this facet of her upbringing, Wall-Wild didn’t finish high school.

“I got kicked out of my first high school. I would cut class and go to the museum or library because I loved to learn but felt that school was a waste. My second school was a magnet called the Chicago High School for Metropolitan Studies, and I could take classes at the Art Institute and Field Museum. That more than made up for my first school,” she says.

However, in her senior year she was told she would have to make up two years of physical education due to undiagnosed asthma. “I took the GED (General Education Diploma) and went to the University of Iowa-Iowa City anyway,” she says.

Despite Wall-Wild’s relatively brief sojourn in Los Angeles, she reports that the trip proved quite memorable, and not only because of her “Jeopardy” appearance.

“While we were there, a very nasty hail storm dumped more than 12 inches of hail on Watts. The children there got their first snow day ever. They had snowball fights and were using cardboard boxes as sleds,” she says. “The TV weather people had us in fits of laughter by telling viewers to wear their long johns because the high temperature would only make 50 degrees. We found that just too funny!”