Health educator reflects on her 'The Price is Right' winnings
Lori Wangberg will remember the relationships she built during the time she spent as a contestant on The Price is Right for the rest of her life.
Wangberg, a health educator at Central Michigan University, appeared on the game show during a filming in March, when she was chosen to come on stage to compete for prizes. While a contestant, Wangberg won a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, along with guitar lessons.
Though Wangberg is excited for the trip to Nashville, the memories she made with the people she met on and behind the scenes of the show have stayed with her. As so much of her job relies on having a healthy mental attitude and a positive outlook, Wangberg said her experience on the game show gave her a new perspective on the importance of person-to-person contact.
"I'm a health educator, so a lot of the things I help students with are stress and anxiety," Wangberg said. "I talk a lot with my students about being mindful and in-the-moment. It really does help to mitigate the stress, if you try to be more present and take time to reflect."
When Wangberg and her husband, Kevin, where planning their spring break trip to Los Angeles, several friends suggested that the couple try to attend the filming of a game show. Wangberg's father had been a fan of The Price is Right for many years before his death in 2001, so the show had a special place in the family's heart.
Though the filming Wangberg attended took place later in the afternoon, participants had to arrive hours earlier to begin filling out paperwork and going through screenings to prepare them for being on the show. Arriving around 11 a.m., the period of time between the sign-up process and the filming was nearly five hours long.
Though the long periods of waiting seemed monotonous at first, Wangberg eventually came to think of them as valuable time to spend interacting with the other potential contestants.
"I think they do it intentionally," Wangberg said. "It's almost like they force you to talk to the other people there. I think they want to see who's going to be the one to engage others, and who's going to be the one that really wants to be there and be passionate and have fun."
Wangberg had in-depth conversations with at least three other potential contestants while they waited for the filming to start. The relationships that she formed carried over to the filming of the show, where everybody in the audience cheered and celebrated each other's successes.
"The whole mentality of the show is to be happy for whoever gets up on stage," Wangberg said. "When they get up there you're like, 'hey, that's my friend,' and you're genuinely excited for that person. That's what I thought my lesson to take away from this was."
"It was an opportunity, instead of feeling upset that you had to wait, or like you had wasted your whole day. It was more about of a reminder that it's important to have these conversations with people face-to-face, and to get to know them."
