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You re-approach 'normal' very slowly. The game is no joke – I lost over 40 pounds over the two seasons I was on Survivor. When I first got home, my body couldn't handle carbohydrates, and I was unable to hold down any heavy, rich foods for almost a month (not that it stopped me from trying). And the initial weight you put on isn't muscle; your body is used to starving and thus converts any fuel it receives into fat stores. For the first few months at home, I carried around a sizable fast-food-fueled tire around my waist. Mental recovery is a trial as well. When you spend a month constantly having your entire peer group discussing your downfall behind your back, you become suspicious of everyone. It was my first day back home, and I was checking out of a grocery store and was asked, per custom, "Paper or plastic?" My brain started racing as to what this little Hispanic woman was trying to get out of me: should I respond honestly? Was she feeling out my level of environmental awareness? Will she gossip about my answer to the bag boy once I'm gone? It's not a switch you can just turn off – I was not the most socially graceful human being when I first returned from the island, and I apologize to my friends that were affected.
It felt a bit too wordy and boring to describe myself as 'comfortably self-assured,' and cocky is a bit more fun, so I ran with it. I feel you should enter any situation in life with some measure of confidence – I can't imagine going into a game or meeting or date with the idea of failure in the front of my mind. It would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So while I don't think I'm over-the-top arrogant, a bit of swagger and self-confidence go a long way in life and definitely helped on the show.
In the everyday world, we primarily interact with people that are similar to ourselves, be it in an office with generally like-minded people or with your group of friends that you have naturally filtered and selected by how much you enjoy their company. You don't deal with people that you don't have some degree of similarity to for any length of time in modern society. Survivor forces you to spend 24 hours a day for over a month with a large group of people that, due to reality show casting, is a complete melting pot of personalities. On my first day on the beach, I was teamed up with a devoutly religious chaplain, a former Miss Teen Utah, a redneck tire re-treader (yes that's a thing) and the only licensed sex therapist in the state of Iowa. And we didn't sit around in an air conditioned room with coffee and chat; we had to immediately mesh and work together to survive the elements. These were people I'd barely ever interact with in real life, and I'm sure some of them weren't too sure how to deal with a longhaired bartender from the beach either.
The most striking aspect of human nature that quickly became apparent was how different people reacted to this forced social interaction that was so radically outside their comfort zone. You can learn a lot about anyone by observing how they treat and talk about someone they don't relate to. Now, imagine those reactions after living in constant stress with several such people for a few weeks. Most contestants can put on a smile for a while, but as the days trudge on and personalities clash, you get glimpses into the psyches of people, and it isn't always pretty. When the stress and starvation provided by Survivor finally wears through the facades and veneers, you see some people's inability to accept others' differences in beliefs, lifestyles and personalities on a core level, and it's a disappointing insight that's impossible to get most anywhere else.
Prior knowledge of the show and preparation was a limited advantage. I knew what situations would be thrown at me and what skills I needed to develop before starting the game, but study and practice are not a substitute for experience. Say you've watched baseball your entire life. You know how to run bases and what to do when the ball gets hit to you. You've played catch in your backyard and you've hit machine-thrown pitches in a batting cage at the local amusement park. In all the drills you've run from the comfort of your own neighborhood, you've been great, but what happens if you're thrust into a real MLB game? Now you must do all of that against live opponents, with ground balls flying off the bats and professional pitchers throwing heat at you. Now you have to do it with the pressure of cameras catching your every move and 40,000 fans screaming at you. Simply put, there's no way watching baseball on TV and practicing at home can prepare you for the big leagues. For Survivor, I practiced making fires in my backyard, and I did crude dry-runs of popular challenges from previous seasons to coach myself up. I read books on survival, as well as military and psychological strategy. But actually putting that knowledge to use is a much different story. You get to your island that first day and there's dozens of cameras pointing at you, it's roughly a million degrees Celsius outside, bugs are swarming you like hot garbage and the fear and paranoia of other's plotting against you becomes real instantly. Strategic decisions don't get to be thought out while perusing Machiavelli's The Prince, sitting on your couch with a beer. They have to be made while two live opponents are staring you in the face waiting for your answer and keying on your tells. All those miles you ran and weights you lifted at home were done on a full belly with no competition or pressure; now you have to do an event twice as demanding after starving for a month, knowing that failure could literally cost you a million dollars. If you're going to be on Survivor, prepare. Prepare physically – get yourself in the best shape possible. Prepare mentally – study seasons from before, and practice puzzles and the like. But most importantly, prepare for all of that preparation to amount to not much at all.
I'm currently trying to ride the wave of popularity I've been lucky to have and take advantage of the opportunities rising in its wake. I love writing and am working through a memoir of a year I spent as a teacher after college, and there are a couple television projects in the works.
I'm better at mixing and consuming them than I am at selling them, so I'm not sure how much of a future I have in the alcoholic beverage world.
The Survivor franchise really "outlasted" all the shows from its 2000 debut. We don't see Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Season 12 on ABC.
Why then, in your opinion, has Survivor performed so well, and how are you going to be a survivor like the show so we will still care about you in a few decades?
Survivor is still alive and kicking because the format is simultaneously authentic and impossibly dynamic. Outside certain twists and challenges that are created by production to keep things exciting, almost nothing is controlled: you drop 20 people in the jungle, give them a machete and some rice, lay down three or four ground rules and let the castaways run a social experiment with minimal interference. It touches a sweet spot in many Americans' sense of adventure, a Lord of the Flies situation with everyday people that could ostensibly be the viewer one day. No two seasons play out the same way, and episode to episode, it stays generally unpredictable. Old women have won just as often as young men, and cast members have to use their respective skills – be it strength or wits or charm, with no trait more advantageous than the other – to outlast their opponents. Survivor lives on because there's simply no other game like it. I suppose the best way to ensure I'm still cared about down the road is to be equally unique.
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