Back in January, after many years of intending to, I finally got coordinated enough to take the online test for the game show
Jeopardy! (which they only hold at certain times of the year, usually January). They don't tell you whether you passed or not, but they randomly select people from among those who did pass to come try out in person. Well, much to my surprise, I got an email at the end of February inviting me to come to audition in Portland, Oregon, on 31 March!
So I get to go visit my best friend from high school, Michelle, in Vancouver, Washington, for the weekend, and then Monday go to the audition, where I will take another 50 question test, and then if I pass that, participate in a mock version of Jeopardy!, and a "short personality interview". And here we come to the point of this post: they want me to list five (5) "interesting bits of information about" me "to be used during our on-camera interview with Alex Trebek". The instructions go on to say "Please list
5 brief bits about yourself below. They only need to be
one-liners. Tell us about your job, hobbies, embarrassing moments, claims to fame, (awards, honors, etc.) your wildest ambition or some unusual things you collect."
Help! What five interesting bits should I use? And how should I phrase them?
Some ideas I have had so far, in no particular order (and no particular wording!):
• In my PhD dissertation I cited a journal article that cited my PhD dissertation (which cited the journal article which cited my PhD dissertation which cited ...).
• My PhD dissertation was in late medieval Scottish women's history.
• As an undergraduate I double majored in physics and medieval studies.
• I'm an onomastician (I study names, in my case medieval personal names, especially Scottish and Irish)
• I'm a recent cancer survivor
• I lived in Scotland for a total of ten years.
• From when I was a pre-schooler, my family played an unusual car game: my parents would say a binary number and we children would try to be the first one to translate it into decimal -- and even though my brothers were older than me, I often won.
• I have my own web site, MedievalScotland.org, which gets over a quarter of a million visits a year.
• I want to start a charity program where whenever I see someone who is losing/lost hair from cancer treatment, I can just hand them a free Buff® on the spot, and then eventually expand it to cancer treatment centers and offices across the country.
• I can do impressions with my hair: balding Napoleon, balding cupie doll, balding punk rocker, balding mad scientist, balding Dracula, balding Bozo the Clown..
So, any ideas? Which five should I use -- and how can I improve the phrasing? Is there something better I'm over looking?
Help!