Junior Annie Cohen and freshman Emma Van Deursen in a test of stomach power.

Going into this I knew that I would lose. I mean I was going up against Annie Cohen in a pie eating contest, so there was no chance that I would win.

Beforehand, I sat there watching her come up with a strategy and I realized that I probably needed one too. I could go for the sides or the bottom. I could eat in a spiral or I could just go for it.

By the time that I decided that I would go for the sides it was time for the contest to start.

The plan was to have the contest in the lower commons. As soon as I saw people sitting in there I headed upstairs because there was no way that I was going to shove my face into a pie in front of other people.

Once everything was set up I heard, “three, two, one, go.” I put my face into the pie and my first thought was: “This pie tastes amazing.” It was a custard pie with blueberries and whipped cream.

The first 30 seconds to one minute was the best. The pie tasted amazing, I was super hungry, and I was getting pie for free. What could be better than that? The only downside was getting custard, whipped cream and blueberries all over my face, and the pie kept slipping away from me, making it harder to eat.

Later in the first minute I realized that it looked like I had eaten almost no pie and gotten no crust. I started to try to eat the crust. Let me tell you, that was hard. I kept getting more of the filling than the crust, and when I did get some crust it was a small piece that did nothing to help it look like I ate more.

But the worst thing was that I was starting to get full and I did not know if I would be able to get to the end. In the second minute I was still trying to eat the crust, and I was failing. So naturally I gave up on that because, what else would I do when it got too hard?

I went back to eating the custard, completely forgetting my strategy of going for the sides, and I started going for the middle. That made it hard, and it probably was the worst decision that I had made.

So far into the contest because it looked like I had eaten nothing and that wasn’t going to help me win. The third minute was probably the worst. I was getting more full and I had no idea how Annie was doing and I was seriously tired of pie.

Once you stuff your face full of pie for about three minutes you really don’t want to eat it anymore.

I started having trouble, as the blueberries kept getting in the way. Whenever I attempted to take a bite I just got a whole bunch of blueberries. This strategy really didn’t help me in the plan: to make it look like I ate more than I did.

Finally I was in the fourth and final minute. For some reason I was feeling less full so I decided to go for the crust more. I hadn’t realize how hard it is to actually eat the crust because earlier I was having a hard time breaking it off.

This time I didn’t have as hard of a time breaking off the crust. I just had a hard time just eating it. When I broke off some bigger pieces of crust they could not completely fit in my mouth.

Leading me to have to break it into smaller pieces and then have to get them back out of the pie. The moment that I heard “stop,” I was so happy. finally got to wipe off all the pie on my face.

After a moment of comparing the two pies it was decided that Annie won by a lot. But hey at least I got some free pie, and the strawberries on Annie’s pie kind of stained her face, so there is that.

By: Emma Van Deursen