By Samantha R. Evensen
On Tuesday, February 11 at 7 p.m., family and friends of Cameron Kim, a former student at Durant high school, gathered at the Beef O’Brady’s, located at 4330 Bell Shoals Rd. in Valrico, and watched as he fulfilled his dreams of competing on the hit game show Jeopardy.
Growing up, Kim was always fascinated with trivia and seemed to absorb information quite readily. In an effort to put the otherwise unproductive facts to use, Kim began filling out and completing the online tests to qualify for Jeopardy. For the past several years he applied, at first for the teen competitions and later for the college tournaments. Since this was his last year of eligibility for the college competition, he especially wanted to make it.
To his avail, he finally received a response in April of last year requesting a follow-up interview.
A month later he was flown out to Nashville where he was asked to once again complete a 50 question open-answered test and six months later in November he got the call that he made it.
He was flown out to the studio in January to record the first episode of the tournament. The game show graciously paid for Kim’s expenses for the two days that he was there. Kim’s mother and sister flew out to California as well to cheer him on.
He was representing Duke University where he currently attends school and double majors in biomedical engineering and mathematics.
However, despite his valiant efforts, he was unable to make it to the semi-finals.
“The whole thing was kind of a surreal experience. It’s really hard to explain how awesome it was, giving me the opportunity to be on there was absolutely amazing. I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” said Kim.
Kim said that although he didn’t win, being on the show was a life-long dream and by the end of the day he had the opportunity to meet some really great people.
As for his future endeavors, Kim has been applying and interviewing for graduate schools and is even looking at prospective schools on the West Coast. For more information on Jeopardy, please visit www.jeopardy.com.
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