Here's my story about taking a risk.
When I was a student at Cambridge University, I also worked freelance as a researcher for British television.
At one BBC party, as I was trying to shove as many shrimp as possible into my cheeks in order to get some kind of protein into my system, a producer asked me to appear on a TV show that was a sort-of grown-up version of College Bowl.
The show was called "Mastermind" and was very popular in Britain at the time.
You sat under a spotlight on a stage and an announcer fired questions at you concerning a special subject and what was vaguely titled "general knowledge."
You had to answer as many questions as you could within the space of three minutes. If you didn't know the answer, you had to say, "pass" because you risked losing points with an incorrect response--sort of like the SATs.
The producer explained that the show had been syndicated in seven or eight countries but the show never made it to the States. There was a small amount of money for the winner but nothing for anyone else. They'd put me in a hotel for the night before the program and give me a food voucher. I would get my photograph taken with the host, Magnus Magnusson.
Would I consider, the producer asked, acting as the official American contestant? I had never seen the program, didn't know who the host was, didn't need to stay in the hotel because I had a boyfriend in London, but when that same British boyfriend whispered that I shouldn't even consider such a thing because I'd "look silly" I made my decision.
Mouth full of shrimp, I managed to convey to the producer that my answer was "Yes."
Later that week I actually watched the terrible, maniacal, sadistic program and was, to put it mildly, unnerved.
I wanted to leave the country and change my name. But I couldn't let the boyfriend think he was right.
So I decided to go through with it. I chose the life and works of the playwright Tennessee Williams as my special subject.
After a month or so, I showed up at the Guildhall in London where the show was being filmed--where, I should explain, it was being filmed live.
I had a rather remarkably bad cold, a runny nose and red eyes; I was fuzzy on codeine cough syrup and mad at the boyfriend who refused to accompany me.
They filmed. I sat in the big leather chair in the spotlight in front of the huge audience and the camera and they filmed.
I did all right on Williams, but when it came to "general knowledge" it turned out that I didn't have any.
I knew almost none of the questions they asked, many of which had to do with American geography that I knew almost nothing about. I could not name all the states run-through by the Mason-Dixon Line. I did not know the highest point in Utah. I did not know the estimated population of Atlanta.
The poor audience members were holding their breath in appalled silence as I kept saying "pass" over and over again.
It was a slaughter. People stopped breathing. I sat under the light and sniffled and said "Pass."
Then the host FINALLY asked me one glorious question: "What kind of animal is a guppy?"
I screamed, absolutely SCREAMED "IT'S A FISH!" and there was sudden wild applause.
The people in the audience were so relieved that I got one right they forgave me everything. They whistled, they stamped their feet; I didn't look silly to them, although I certainly looked like somebody who beat the odds.
At that moment, I discovered anything worth doing was worth doing, period--worth doing well, or even worth doing poorly if you couldn't do it any other way.
When little old ladies met me the next day in Tesco's, they didn't say "Oooo, you were the idiot who said 'guppy'" but instead said "Weren't you the American girl on the telly? 'Ows your cold, then? Feeling better now? Weren't you brave?" They were terribly kind and threw no stones. I quickly got over the thought that anybody gave a damn what you did on tv because they didn't care enugh to remember much except that you did something.
My prize was a cup and a pen with "Mastermind" printed on the side, but what I won was priceless: a sense that taking a risk, even when failure looms large, is worth it.
