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Volume 56, Issue 44 | monday, february 7, 2022 | ndsmcobserver.com
ND student competes on ‘Jeopardy!’ Senior Matt Downing represents University in ‘Jeopardy! National College Championship’ By ALYSA GUFFEY Notre Dame News Editor
Matt Downing never considered himself a “Jeopardy!” superfan. “I think it’s a great show, but it’s not like I need to watch every episode and I’ve been dying to be on the show since I was a kid,” Downing said. But one day, he sat down to watch “Jeopardy!” and practiced clicking a pen to buzz in to answer a question. Why? Because people who had been on the daily game show told him it resembled the real clicker on the show — and he had to be ready to compete. On Thursday, Downing will represent Notre Dame on the national stage in the 2022 Jeopardy! National College Championship — a contest where 36 college students from
NDPD crime log updated Observer Staff Report
A rape was reported to the Notre Dame Police Department (NDPD) Thursday, according to the Universit y crime log. The alleged incident took place after 11 p.m. Oct. 28 and before 9 a.m. on Oct. 29 in an on-campus men’s residence hall. A report of sexual batter y and strangulation is also reported on the Thursday crime log. The t wo alleged counts occurred Jan. 18 in an on-campus women’s residence hall. Information about sexual assault prevention, as well as resources for surv ivors of sexual assault, are available online from NDPD and from the Title I X office.
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across the country participate in 12 individual games. The 12 winners then go into bracket-style play, with the ultimate champion winning $250,000. Downing is a senior, double majoring in marketing and applied computational and statistical mathematics and hails from Long Island, New York. He said he decided to fill out a “Jeopardy!” test one day in November of 2020. He was then contacted to take a couple more tests and participate in a mock game over Zoom. “They told me I’d be in the player pool for like a year, but I didn’t hear from them,” Downing said. “I kind of like totally forgot about it because like it had been like forever.” After almost two years, his phone rang. “I got a call from the producer
and they’re like, ‘Hey, are you still interested in being on the show?’” Downing said. Due to COVID restrictions, Downing flew to California solo and stayed in a hotel with the other competitors. He said he was able to take a trip to the Santa Monica Pier, but after long days on the set, he had little time or energy to do much else. Downing said the production set was just as it looks on television, but there is one thing the at-home audience cannot tell — the temperature is kept very low in the studio. “It’s really cold in there, and they keep it like that because they don’t want you to sweat while you’re on T.V.,” Downing said. “And because everyone has to go through hair and makeup, they didn’t want anything
Courtesy of Jeopardy Productions, Inc.
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Notre Dame senior Matt Downing will appear on Jeopardy this Thursday, alongside 35 other college students from across the nation.
Professor publishes first book By CRYSTAL RAMIREZ Associate News Editor
Assistant professor of religious studies and theology Jessica Coblentz recently released a book titled “Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression” — which focused the harrowing realities of life with depression from a Christian theological perspective.
Initial dissertation research and reactions When asked what initially inspired her to write her book, Coblentz says it seemed natural to her to continue the research she had gathered for her dissertation because it was a topic she knew she wanted to educate others on. “Some disciplines don’t kind of lend themselves to writing books in the same way that theology does,” Coblentz said. “It’s not uncommon for professors of theologies to write books, and it’s also common for theologians to base their first book, at least in part on their dissertation research.” Coblentz mentioned that she was not certain what she would be focusing her
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dissertation on, but she knew she wanted to address the realities of mental health. “I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to focus that interest for a dissertation,” she said. “And I realized at that point that mental health conditions are a reality that lots of people struggle with, but there was very little academic, theological research on it.” Coblentz said she recently found herself reflecting her dissertation topic. This is what then lead her to take a chance at writing a book on the intersectionality of depression and spirituality. “I started thinking about writing a book about depression because I wrote my dissertation research on the topic of depression,” she said. “That dissertation research that I did for my Ph.D. introduced me to some amazing theological conversations about mental health and occasioned my first foray into this topic.” After finishing her dissertation, Coblentz knew she wanted to continue writing on other mental health issues but for the book, she wanted to take it in a different direction. In relation to the timeline
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of events leading up to writing this book, Coblentz notes that it all felt like a natural fit — from graduate training to teaching and ultimately beginning to work on the book. “There are natural transition that happens along the course of graduate training and early career research,” she said. “It was, first at that sort of transition moment that I realized, I had a long-standing interest in theologies of suffering.”
Transitioning from dissertation to book Coblentz was knew she want to fill the space that was missing in the research on mental health after she finished her dissertation and started teaching. “I knew I was at least interested enough in addressing this lacuna to write a dissertation on it,” she said. “Once I finished the dissertation, there was another sort of natural transition, and a place for a pause as I began my teaching career, and sort of thought about whether I was gonna keep working on this topic or start something else.” Once Coblentz realized
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this was a topic and issue she wanted to research, she noted it was not a quick process. “What I realized is that even though it took me kind of years to bring my dissertation to fruition, in the time that I spent doing that, there wasn’t a lot more work in theology and mental health than when I started,” she said. It was this realization that solidified Coblentz’s decision to write and research over the realities of mental health struggles — she wanted to raise awareness for the topic. “So I saw that there was an ongoing need for theological research on this topic, and awareness of mental health struggles had only grown during that time and continues to grow today,” she said. As she began conducting research and diving deeper into the subject, she came to realize how intimidating this field of study can truly be. “I learned from the experience of writing my dissertation that this was a really meaningful endeavor,” she said. “As you can imagine, it’s difficult
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