D

ec. 30, 2016: I’m watching 
the Michigan football team 
play in the Orange Bowl 

when Head Coach Jim Harbaugh 
starts wildly clapping, clipboard in 
hand. I turn to my dad and shout, 
“Jim Harbaugh claps like a seal!” 
Then I take to Twitter and retweet 
everyone saying the same thing.

I had been accepted into the 

University of Michigan about a week 
before, but this was the first real 
bond I felt with my future school. 
See, Harbaugh and I have something 
in common: We both made fools of 
ourselves by clapping incorrectly on 
national TV.
J

uly 4, 2011: I’m sitting on 
my couch, family gathered 
around, 
watching 
myself 

on “Jeopardy!” Being on the kids’ 
version of the quiz show was a dream 
that had materialized out of nowhere, 
one I thought would never happen. 
And yet, here I was, watching my TV 
debut.

On TV, I hit a Daily Double and 

began clapping, as is customary on 
the show. But instead of clapping like 
my competitors, like a normal person, 
I held my hands perfectly straight and 
parallel to each other and clapped, 
well, like a seal.

I put my head in my hands, unable 

to watch.

The first thing no one tells you 

about being on a quiz show: Watching 
yourself on TV isn’t fun. It’s a 
cringefest made infinitely worse once 
you realize millions of people are 
watching it.

I was self-conscious about the way 

I clapped from then on. Hey, at least 
Harbaugh is good company.

My 
second-place 
finish 
netted 

$2,000 and 15 new friends (the other 
contestants from my tape day — they 
tape a whole week of shows in one 
session). Not bad for a day’s work. But 
after that, I came to the realization 
that maybe I would never do anything 
that cool again. I was washed up at 
the age of 12.

Still, I had been on a quiz show, and 

that itself was something I could use 
to my advantage — or so I thought. A 
year after my show aired, I moved to 
Michigan where I would start eighth 
grade not knowing anyone. Everyone 
already had their friends, so I needed 
a way to stand out.

By my second week, the entire grade 

might as well have known. I got the 
attention I wanted, but there would 
be 
unintended 
consequences. 
By 

making my “Jeopardy!” appearance 
the first thing anyone knew about 
me, I was basing my identity around 
it — an identity I would later realize I 

didn’t want.

The second thing no one tells you 

about being on a quiz show: You’re 
quizzed 
about 
your 
experience. 

Constantly.

“How did you get on the show?” 

(Online test, in-person audition, lots 
of luck.)

“What’s Alex Trebek like?” (We 

barely interacted with him, but nice 
I guess.)

“Is your episode online?” (No, 

thank god.)

And of course, “Did you win?” (The 

conversation usually ended when I 
said no.)

The third thing no one tells you 

about being on a quiz show: There 
comes a point when the show becomes 
your identity, and at that point it 
almost becomes out of your control.

There were no words I dreaded 

more from a teacher than, “We’re 
playing 
Review 
‘Jeopardy!’ 
this 

week.” 
Review 
“Jeopardy”! 

was 
usually 
a 
PowerPoint 
with 

“Jeopardy!”-style questions where 
teams competed for extra credit 
right before a test. Every time, all my 
classmates — some of whom I barely 
knew — raced to be on a team with 
me, convinced I would lead them to 
victory and the ever-important extra 
credit points, never mind that Review 
“Jeopardy!” requires very different 
skills from actual “Jeopardy!”. A win 
was meaningless because of how I 
had been used. A loss meant I had let 
everyone down.

Being introduced to people often 

followed a script: “Hi, this is Aria, 
and she was on 
‘Jeopardy!’” 
It 

was cool, until 
my appearance 
got further and 
further in the 
rearview mirror 
and I was dying 
to be known for 
something else. 
Anything else.
T

oward the 
end of my 

freshman 
year 

of high school, 
I 
discovered 

Twitter. 
It 

wasn’t 
long 

before 
my 

curiosity 
got 

the 
better 
of 

me and I looked 
up tweets from 
the day of my 
“Jeopardy!” 
appearance. 
I 

had to see what 
people had said.

“What the hell they got this 

little girl dressed in?” one tweet 
said. “Looking like a freeze-dried 
strawberry?”

“Aria looks like Gilbert Gottfried,” 

read another.

And then, sure enough: “This little 

girl Aria on ‘Jeopardy!’ claps like a 
seal.”

They were supposed to be insults, 

that much I knew. But here I was, 
years removed from my 15 minutes 
of fame, and all I could do was laugh. 
The mean tweets were ridiculous and 
overblown, but I could see a kernel 
of truth in them, and that was all the 
ammunition I needed to reclaim my 
identity.

I did something I hadn’t been able 

to for years: rewatch my episode. I 
found the exact moment that spawned 
the “claps like a seal” tweet. I made 
it into a Vine, which I subsequently 
posted on Twitter. It was my pinned 
tweet for almost two years.

The Vine was a joke, yes. But I didn’t 

make it to own the haters, at least not 
really. I made it because it finally 
gave me control over the narrative. If 
I was going to be washed up, at least I 
could make fun of myself for it.
O

nce I got to college, I realized 
that people didn’t have to 
know about “Jeopardy!” –– 

so I didn’t tell them. In Introduction 
to Psychology we played Review 
“Jeopardy!”. My team was a random 
group of people who sat near me. We 
didn’t win and they didn’t care. It was 
refreshing.

When people did find out I had 

been on “Jeopardy!”, it was usually 
because they’d gone to my Twitter 
and seen the Vine. We’d laugh about 
it together, but the pressure was 
gone, because I was no longer “that 
girl who was on ‘Jeopardy!’”

Instead, I was Aria: Amateur sports 

writer, Twitter addict, U-M student. 
“Jeopardy!” was a thing I had done, 
but as it faded further and further 
into the past, it became less and less 
a part of who I was. Maybe getting 
bylines in a student newspaper isn’t 
quite as cool as being on a quiz show, 
but it’s close.

It took a surprisingly long time for 

me to unpin the tweet about clapping 
like a seal, because it had become 
as much a part of me as my original 
appearance on the show. But it was 
the moment I realized I didn’t need it 
anymore — that I didn’t have to dwell 
on the past to find something I was 
proud of — that I started to feel like 
maybe I hadn’t peaked after all.

Nowadays, 
my 
pinned 
tweet 

isn’t about “Jeopardy!” It’s about 
my favorite stories I wrote while 
covering softball for The Daily.

Of course, I haven’t left my quiz 

show days totally behind. It’s still 
in my Twitter bio, and sometimes, 
people still find out, and they ask me 
about it, the same gamut of questions 
I’ve gotten for seven years now. But 
it’s different.

“Wait, you were on ‘Jeopardy!’?” 

they say. “Did you win?”

“Nope,” I say.
Then I smile and change the 

subject.

Wednesday, September 5, 2018// The Statement 
 
7B

I’ll take my identity for 800 dollars 

BY ARIA GERSON, DAILY SPORTS WRITER

Courtesy of Aria Gerson

