Paul Hebert stared into the eyes of Meredith Viera, awaiting a response as 600 faces and intense spotlights focused in on them.
"Is that your final answer?" Vieira said.
Viera, host of the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, rambled off a series of questions while Paul Hebert, a sophomore English major at UB, sat in the hot seat.
"It's all so surreal when you're there," he said.
Network rules prevented Hebert from telling The Spectrum how much he won on the program, which is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. tomorrow on Buffalo's NBC affiliate, WGRZ-TV Channel 2.
Making the cut for the show came as a surprise to Hebert, who had merely entered as a joke.
According to Hebert, his friend John Adamec, a student at Coastal Carolina University, was the one who was intent on being on the show. Hebert said he accompanied his friend to the preliminary testing in New York City just for kicks.
"I just went there to stand around and make fun of him, because I'm a good friend like that," he said.
While at the testing studio, Hebert decided he might as well take the preliminary test, which included a short SAT-style exam and a five-minute interview.
A few weeks later, a postcard and a phone call verified that Hebert had qualified to be on the show. His friend John received a letter of rejection.
"I'm the one who got it, because I'm the one who thought it was a goof," says Hebert. "At this point, I was ecstatic."
Once in Florida, where the show is taped, Hebert spent a day striking poses for promotional photos on Disney theme park rides. A few episodes were taped later in the evening, and Hebert watched from the sidelines as contestant after contestant stepped up to the center stage.
"I joked with the producers in the deck area – we had a little party," says Hebert.
On the second night, Hebert watched the line of contestants in front of him dwindle away until it was his turn to step up and be tested.
"I was on auto-pilot. You just do what they instruct and answer the set of questions they ask you," Hebert says.
His friend Lizzie Goldfarb, a freshman math major, cheered him on from the audience.
"(The taping) was very exciting for me," she said. "I can't even imagine what Paul was feeling. The audience was going wild for him, more so than for the other contestants."
Though nobody knows how much Hebert won on the show, his friends and professors said they have every confidence in him.
"He's so quirky, I was hardly surprised that he was chosen for the college edition, even over his brainiac friends," Goldfarb said. "They were looking for students with a certain 'spirit.' I think Paul did a great job."
At UB, Hebert sings in the UB Choir and pens the comic strip "Better Than Stick Figures," which appears in The Spectrum.
"Paul Hebert has an active and inquisitive intellect," says Michael Basinski, Associate Curator at UB's Rare Poetry Collection, where Hebert works. "He is representative of our best students and was an excellent ambassador to Millionaire land."
E-mail: news@ubspectrum.com
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
