Well folks we done it. The first part of DI has finished, and I’m certainly not saying that it’ll be all fun and games from here, but at least we’re half way done, right? Anyhow, lemme do a quick lil explanation of DI. Basically, it’s a learning competition. We in PLP get put into groups and assigned a challenge. The challenges are engineering, technical, fine arts, improv, and scientific. This year I got the fine arts challenge. Our challenge was to recreate a photo of our choice, and several other added things. The group I was with was Anders, Asha, Angelo, and Liam. And now that I’ve given you just a little run down of DI, check out their website here if you wanna know more. And if not let’s hop into the post!

We started the project with a lot of forms, these forms were things like, a team contract, planning forms, decision making forms, and idea generating challenges to help us prepare for the challenge ahead. It was also the time when we had to study our challenge. We had to read the rules of the road (a rule guide for DI basically), and we had to read our challenge rules specifically, so we could know what we were supposed to do for the challenge. This is where the competency UNDERSTAND competency really comes in. We had to read through, talk about, and then eventually understand our challenge to be able to complete it to the best of our ability. The planning however was not done here we still had to do some research to do. As a part of our challenge we had to research for famous photos to recreate, and different photographic techniques to use in our new development. RESEARCH was also a competency in DI this year and was probably one of our weakest points in DI. We were very slow at finishing our research and lost a lot time for building because of our slow planning. For the rest of DI and next year too My group really needs to focus on making decisions quicker and being able to plan things out so that we don’t waste our time.

Once we had planned we started to build. This is where communication becomes all important. If you don’t communicate what people need to do, bring, and finish, nothing will happen and everything will literally be chaos. I have to say this definitely happened to my team a little this year, we got it under control, but it was one of the reasons we had to finish A LOT of stuff last minute. Eventually we got it together and got things done, but definitely not to the highest quality. Also all of this last minute preparation meant my team DID NOT get enough time to practice our script, and meant that our performance was a little bit more choppy then we would have liked it. For next year, and I know I said this last year too, but for goodness sakes COMMUNICATION IS KEY! I am absolutely telling you DI will not succeed if you don’t communicate. I’ve been in two DI groups now and communication was one of our weakest points, and often our biggest downfall. For next year, and basically any other plp projects, I really need to remember communication! I need to remember to communicate, and communicate well. I need to work on being able to talk to people to their face and if not, being able to talk to people over message so everything can get done. But I also need to be able to get better at receiving instructions and being able to not be leading. Because I’m not always going to be able to lead, and that’s something I’m always going to need to work on.

Finally after all the preparation we got our time to shine! After several months of practice we finally got to show our product! It was not the most smooth performance, and the acting was interesting, but it was ok. We most definitely needed more practice, and for provincials we most DEFINITELY need to rehearse more, but it honestly could have been worse. For provincials I think we just need to focus on knowing our cues so that the performance doesn’t look as choppy. Everyone in general sort of knew their lines, but no one really knew when to go on stage. We also really need to work on our set, and need to make the set changes much more smooth and less awkward to look at.

Here’s a bonus photo of my group!

In the end I think that this DI went fairly well. I don’t think it went better than last year, but I will say we didn’t fail. I think we have a lot of things to improve on for provincials, such as set, acting, rehearsing, and fine-tuning various different parts of the challenge, but I think we can get it done, if we can figure out how to communicate. As I mentioned earlier communication has not been my teams strongest suit, and we can get very heated/argumentative when it comes to making decisions and giving instructions. For provincials we need to make decisions fast, and make sure once those decisions are made EVERYONE is told, so that there no mistakes due to bringing things is/getting things done. I do think if we manage to communicate, finish things on time,and keep our temper, well mainly if I can keep my temper, (this is becoming a long list), we can’t definitely do well at provincials, and be proud of ourselves! Alrighty then folks, I’ll be seeing you a lot in the next couple days, so see you soon I guess? Bye!

Holly