A Game of Answers and Questions

TA Christina Yim leads students in a game of "Jeopardy!" (above) while Sachin Sinha (above) races to write down the answer before his classmates to score some points for Team A.

Story by Walker Bauer/ Photos by Lucas Postolos

M&M staffers

The answer: A fun afternoon activity for a “brain” class of Duke TIP students.

The question: What is “Jeopardy!”?

Students in Instructor Desiree Sharpe’s “Brain, Intelligence and Creativity” class, more commonly referred to as “the brain class,” played a version of the popular television trivia show Thursday, June 25.

Five people sat on the floor as four small white boards were distributed to four groups.
TA Christina Yim (pictured above, left) explained the rules and wrote down the topics for “Jeopardy!”

There were five categories: “The Brain Train,” “Mouse Party,” “Neuroscience,” “Sensation and Perception” and “Sleep/ Brain disorder.” Questions varied greatly and even some of the students in the class didn't know the answers. The four teams consisted of “Globo Gym purple Cobras”, “Team ‘A’”, “The Mothers” and “the O.T.’s,” which is an inside class joke.

The rules of the game are the same as the game show hosted by Alex Trebek. The host reveals the answer and the teams have to make a question for the information given. At the game starts it's easy to see that this class is very competitive and that this game may end in some disputes.

The first arguments come with the first question and after that every group quickly yells and defends their answer. Team O.T. quickly gains the lead and never looks back while team Globo Gym Purple Cobras gets only a few questions right. Through thick and thin all of the teams eventually reconciled and went back to having fun and yelling out random comments that people had said throughout the year.