For Chris Holden, having widespread interests is valuable. A veteran of high school Quiz Bowl competitions, Holden converted his encyclopedia of trivial knowledge into a $25,000 prize on the 2004 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament.

Holden had years of preparation for the show. As a student at Carlisle High School in Pennsylvania, he was part of a team that, for three consecutive years, competed on Brain Busters, a high school quiz show airing throughout central Pennsylvania.

But his appearance on Jeopardy!, he says, was "just the luck of the draw." He applied for the show online and soon after was invited to an interview in New York City. After a few months, a news crew from a local television station burst into his classroom and announced that he had been chosen as a contestant.

Soon after, Holden and his family were on their way to Sony Pictures Studios in Southern California. Answering everything in the form of a question, Holden aced two rounds of the tournament to advance to the two-episode finals. He finished in second place.

After a summer that included a European vacation funded by his Jeopardy! winnings, Holden came to Kenyon-a college he says was his first and only choice. "Kenyon just struck me as a really good fit," he says. "There was nowhere else that I felt compelled to apply to."

Kenyon fits his curious personality, Holden adds. An avid writer since his early years, Holden planned to major in English. But an introductory philosophy class has piqued his interest in that discipline, so much so that he is considering becoming a philosophy major. "Philosophy raises a lot of questions," he says. "The questions are more important than the answers."