Pi(e) Day Celebrations

For the past few years, I’ve enjoyed celebrating the somewhat nerdy holiday of Pi day, which happens on March 14 (3.14 in honour of pi). This year’s pi day was even more special because it would be 3.14.15!

Last year I celebrated with pie and a private viewing of Life of Pi at my house, which ended up being a sleeper hit with a vast variety of students and fringe acquaintances attending. This year, I brought the party on campus, but we celebrated one day early (so we wouldn’t make the students come in on Saturday).

We made pie flyers, a variety of pies and set the room to welcome people well. I decided this year to show a few clips of the movie and then allow space for more focused discussion. The clips got people deeply invested in the story and the discussion helped us reveal how and what we resonated with. As we finished with the big question of which story did we prefer the one with the tiger or without and how it is the same with God, I could see the moments when it all clicked into place for the students. After the event, one of my leaders who was wrestling through a big decision saw her story in the movie and realized that the thing she was trying to hold onto was like the mysterious carnivorous island, what once was a very good life-giving thing for her now was destroying her, and she needed to let it go to move on.

One of my highlights from the event was how we started off the event with pie-themed haikus (pie-kus) and had a pie-ku battle. I started off the festivities with this gem:

I love cherry pie

It is my jam and so good

Wouldn’t you agree?

Here’s some of my favourites written by my wacky students (clearly some struggled with the rules of writing haikus):

I enjoy all pies

Savoury as well as sweet

Which do you prefer?

We are so fly eat-

Ing blueberry apple pie

Why won’t you be mine?

Roman numeral

It’s used in mathematics

Math, math, circle, math

You smile with you eyes

Cuz we got loads of pie bloat-

Ed but we won’t die

Today I ate pie

However I did not die

Because pie saves lives

And the one that closed down the competition:

3.141

5926535

8979