Hobokenite Looks Back At Time in 'Big Brother' House

Big Brother contestant Adam Poch credits his New Jersey background with helping navigate the treacherous terrain on the 13th season of the hit summer reality show.

He told Hoboken Patch that, although he finished in third place on Wednesday, the 75th and final day of the competition, he wouldn't have changed a thing.

"There was not one thing I regret," he said. "You have to make decisions and own them and fess up to them and roll with it. That's what I did the entire game. I did not want to play the Big Brother 'what if' game. I wanted to play Adam's game and see where that took me. And it got me pretty far."

Poch, born in East Brunswick, has made Hoboken his home for the last 16 years. "I've adopted that city as my own," he said. "It has a small town feel and I'm putting my roots there."

"Growing up in Jersey, we have a lot of characters," Poch said. "Jersey is full of different, unusual, strange, nutty people. Based on my experiences, I was able to connect with every single person in the house. I knew a little bit about enough things to get by."

He calls the experience of being on Big Brother, including celebrating his 40th birthday in front of millions of viewers, like nothing else he has had in his life.

Though Poch was perhaps the biggest fan of the show among all the housemates, he still had a lot to learn. "As a fan of the show, you watch the show, you see the show, you root for people. But actually being in the house?  What you watch on TV does not prepare you for what you have to do when you get inside the house. There's such a crazy mix of people and personalities.

"You have to find a way to try to fit in with people. I have a big personality, as well. Sometimes I needed to shut up and listen. Sometimes I needed to talk. That was the biggest challenge but I feel like I was right there. I played a clean, honest game as much as I could in this house."

Asked to give advice to future houseguests, Poch suggests they be careful about their attachments. "The hardest thing on this show is knowing who to trust," he said.

It also helps not to smoke, he said. When he thinks about the final days of the competition, his mind returns to an underwater maze game to help determine Head of Household. He lost the game and, perhaps because of that, the half million dollar prize that went to winner Rachel Reilly instead.

"It's good to have a thick skin, too. People are going to talk about you. People are going to make fun of you. People are going to plot against you. You cannot let things get to you," Poch said, "It's such an emotional roller coaster."

To appear on Big Brother, Poch left his girlfriend and his job as an inventory manager for a record label. After leaving the Big Brother house he has returned to his girlfriend, but is not sure about his job. 

"My boss is a huge Big Brother fan. If you noticed, whenever I cast a vote to evict, I always touched my left ear. That was my signal to my boss so she knew that I was still thinking about her and all my coworkers and that I miss them."

He knew he risked losing his job by being gone for months, he said, "but I was willing to take the chance to make a dream come true."

And what will he miss the most about the Big Brother house?

"The unlimited supply of bacon," he answered without a moment of hesitation. "Not one week did we ever run out of bacon. Now, when I want bacon, I can't go to the storage room and just pull out another package. I'm going to have to go to the store and buy it."