Pie Eating Contest

In class Professor Corrigan performed a fantastic demonstration with another student in class. It was a pie eating contest, but the only difference with this contest, from other I have seen, was that neither one of the opponents looked at each other. This was interesting because no one in the class anticipated what was about to take place.

When the contest started Derek, Professors Corrigan’s opponent, dug right into his pecan pie without second guessing a thing, while Professor Corrigan took his sweet old time, by taking a sip of his coffee and slowly eating the pie. In fact, Professor Corrigan takes the time to wipe his lips with his napkin while he is supposedly in a contest to see who can finish their pie first. Obviously, Derek was going to win because Professor Corrigan was bound to not finish his pie at the rate he was going. Derek on the other hand, with his back faced toward Professor Corrigan, had no clue that he was doing that, so he hurriedly ate his pie by taking huge bites and swallowing quickly without taking any water. At the end of the contest, Professor Corrigan simply waits for Derek to finish and while he does not finish his own pie, instead he sits, completely satisfied with the amount he ate. The total time it took Derek to finish was six minutes and four seconds, including the crust.

While they had this “contest”, Professor Corrigan asked the class to be very attentive while taking notes based off of what they observed. By doing this the class came up with many analogies of why this was a good experiment. First, someone spoke of savoring the taste, and I feel that, that analogy fits quite well with reading literature and character development. When you are reading a story, you do not really get much out of it, unless you “chew” on what you have read and truly take the time to understand the meaning the author was trying to get across. I also feel that the same is true for writing or developing a character, you do not want to just create a character without thinking thoroughly what you want that character to be like and or look like. If you create a character quickly, you may miss out on so many details that will help the reader believe that your character is real. Even in class on Friday, Professor Corrigan called us, the students, ignorant because we have not sat down and studied as many characters as he has and also because we have simply not allowed ourselves to contemplate our thoughts, our emotions and basically our well-beings. In this since, I feel that the pie- eating contest showed us a lot because many times, I, myself, feel like life is a race/ contest, but if we just would take the time to savor the moments by reflecting and thinking and savor the texts that we read, we would grasp life a little bit better.