This past Thursday, Ms. Symington organized the second annual pumpkin carving contest in the cafeteria. Students were encouraged to bring in a pumpkin of their own and participate in the contest. After school until 5:30, students used the tools generously supplied by Ms. Symington to carve their pumpkins. Quickly, everyone got dirty. Ms. Symington cut off the tops of each pumpkin and all the participating students began the laborious, yet fun, task of emptying out the pumpkin guts and seeds. After spending about a half an hour of emptying the pumpkin, students began carving. Some students took a free-style approach and simply carved whatever came to their mind. However, other kids had a creative idea already in their mind, while others used a stencil to be precise and clean (but really it’s impossible to stay clean when carving pumpkins!).

After the students finished their pumpkin on Thursday after school, Ms. Symington carefully moved them from the cafeteria to the lobby, where students could admire them as they walked into OP. On Friday, which was Halloween, a survey was sent out during school for students to vote for their favorite pumpkin. The poll was closed at 2:00 PM so the votes could be tallied and the winner announced. During the afternoon announcements, the winner was announced. First place went to the “Ghostbusters” pumpkin created by Anthony Smith and Lorenzo Beer.

Since the winner was my own pumpkin, I can tell you exactly how we did it! On Wednesday after school, Anthony and I simply went on Google, and searched “cool pumpkin carving stencils.” As we filed through the millions of images provided by Google, we found one that we both agreed on. We wanted a design that was plausible and possible to create in two hours. This design seemed perfect and popular. Anthony and I split up the work. First, I emptied the pumpkin of its guts and seeds, and later, Anthony carved the pumpkin using the stencil. As Anthony carved the pumpkin, I went through the piles of pumpkins guts and picked out the seeds to bring home, bake, and munch on!

Overall, Ms. Symington did a fantastic job organizing this second annual pumpkin contest as it was a giant success. Hopefully next year, we can get more participants. I know I had fun!