Middle Georgia State University professor to appear on ‘Jeopardy!’ Find out how she did.

Middle Georgia fans of the popular quiz show “Jeopardy!” may recognize a familiar face on the show Wednesday.

Laura Thomason, an English professor at Middle Georgia State University, is a contestant on the show.

But you’ll have to tune in at 7:30 p.m. on WMAZ-TV to see if she wins.

Thomason said she’s not allowed to talk about the outcome, the categories, questions or anything like that until after the show airs.

She’ll be teaching a class when the show airs and plans to tape it and watch it later. Meanwhile, a little viewing party among colleagues is planned at a lounge at the Student Life Center on campus.

One of the best parts of the experience for Thomason was when she shared a personal anecdote with host Alex Trebek on the show. She’s also keeping those details under wraps.

“I’m probably allowed to say but I don’t think I want to,” said Thomason as she started to laugh, “because it was really a highlight moment for me and I’d rather for people to watch it.”

She did share that the anecdote has something to do with her “major extracurricular activity” of ballroom dancing. She and her husband, Daniel Boudreault, compete together and teach a little bit. Thomason is the president of the local chapter of USA Dance.

Thomason and her husband traveled in mid-November for the show’s taping in Los Angeles, where they met up with Thomason’s close friend, Vicki Hibbert of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The women first met when working together at a shoe store in Tulsa, where Thomason lived from age 10-18.

“So we were a little band of three on all of our Jeopardy adventures,” Thomason said.

Boudreault and Hibbert enjoyed watching the show, while Thomason waited in the green room with other contestants for their call to play the game. When a contestant is called is randomized over the days they’re invited to appear, and five shows are taped each day.

“You’re there for two to three days and you’re kind of at the mercy of the random selection process and then of your own skill,” Thomason said.

Boudreault was among the first to ask Trebek a question during the commercial breaks.

“He was very excited ... He’s also a Canadian from Quebec and he wanted to ask him if he’d been to Quebec and I think he asked him in French and Alex responded in French. So that was kind of sweet,” Thomason said.

The trip included a visit to Venice Beach to see the ocean, the J. Paul Getty Museum and sight seeing in Beverly Hills.

“I saw more Maseratis in a day than I normally do in year,” Thomason said.

Her husband spotted actor Christoph Waltz as he passed them on the street.

“He was excited that he’d seen a celebrity,” Thomason said. “That’s what’s supposed to happen when you go to Los Angeles.”

They also stumbled into a sports memorabilia auction of signed baseballs, boxing robes and such. They learned later that the collection had belonged to a doctor who lives in the Atlanta area.

“Just a funny coincidence,” Thomason said.

While on the show, Thomason was glad to report that she was able to get into her game-playing zone. She learned not to look at the monitor where she could see herself, was thankful she didn’t take a misstep from a raised platform that contestant stands on to keep them all at the same height and was nervous only for a moment when Trebek was standing near her waiting for a prompt.

“He was really lovely,” Thomason said of Trebex. “He was professional but funny, very warm, energetic.”

Trebex was also open about his battle with cancer, talking about how he feared it was not the disease that would take his life but the chemotherapy. If you didn’t know, you would not have known by his appearance or manner that he was sick, Thomason said.

“He was friendly. He was engaging. He was having fun with us and we were having fun with him,” Thomason said. “It was really a lovely experience, and honestly knowing that he’s not going to be around forever, I’m really moved to have gotten to meet him.”

Encouraged by her husband, Thomason had been trying to get on the show by taking online tests on and off since 2008. She auditioned three times, with the most recent one during a show tryout held in Atlanta last year.

“Since I came back, I’ve been telling everyone, if they even think they might want to be on the show, if they’ve even given it like a random thought, they should go ahead and take the test and try because it doesn’t cost anything to take the test

“It’s very short and quick. You never even actually find out how you did. The so-called worst case scenario is just you never hear anything and you’ve spent 20 minutes that you’d probably would have spent on your computer anyway,” she said.