Team Constructures!
Woooh! Destination Imagination (DI) regionals have come and gone! What an exciting, adventurous, stressful and rewarding journey so far! Although DI is a fun experience, my team and I suffered some stressful moments but also learned an important lesson along the way. If you have never heard or been to a DI tournament before, you might be thinking, « Kiera, slow down! » or, « What is all this nonsense? » Well, for those of you who don’t have a clue what I am talking about, DI or Destination Imagination is an academic based worldwide competition where school age kids all the way to post secondary compete, have fun and solve challenges. Students are divided into groups of 2-7 people where they will work together and prepare a solution to their given challenge. During the tournament, team members are also required to think on the spot as they complete a mystery instant challenge. The purpose of this competition is to grow your mind. Not only will you learn from the tournament itself, but also from the journey leading to the big day! Below, I have attached a video of highlights from past DI tournaments. Hopefully if my words have not explained DI well enough, this video will give you a visual of what happens on this big and exciting day!
Click on the video below for information and an explanation of our challenge!⤵️
This was my first ever year of DI. I was placed in the Engineering challenge with team members Sam, Caleb and Grace. Together we had to create a unique story and structure. The structure, on the day of the tournament, would be placed in a tester base and weights would be dropped on the structure to see how much weight it could hold. The story, had to be integrated with the dropping of weights and a backdrop or event depicter had to be apart of your presentation. For months, my group and I worked hard to brainstorm ideas. We finally came to the idea of how we would create a structure. Research gave us the idea of using triangles as they are the strongest shape. Below is an image of the wire frame for our structure.
Once we had an idea for the structure, it was time for work on the story part of the challenge. Caleb and Sam were our story brainstormers. They basically came up with the whole story including the characters and sudden event that would occur. The story would be about a king(Sam) and queen (Me) who got attacked by a giant(Caleb). A narrator (Grace) would tell the story as the giant dropped the weights which would represent him pounding on a cellar door to attack! Choosing who would play who caused a bit of friction between our team, but I just had to take one for the team and was therefore cast as the queen (so not me!) For further details on the story, click on the link below to view our script!⤵️
During this whole experience, I have experienced some amazing fun times and some stressful and unpleasant times. I like to think of my group’s progress like a river ride. We departed together into the unknown which is like departing on a new journey. My group and I then rode pretty smoothly for a while and everything went pretty much as planned. However, as most experienced people would know, something would go wrong and that’s exactly what happened. Our group started getting overpowered my large waves of stress and work. We hit sharp turns and rocks (set backs and unlikely events) until finally, we got into a huge argument and hit a waterfall which symbolizes our group’s downfall. But, just like a waterfall, something amazing happens afterwards and you get back up on your feet again and the whole cycle restarts. Most people during DI will experience this.my group and I learned that you just have to persevere, work hard, be determined and work with what you got. And if you can do this, you’ve already accomplished something through DI!
DI is like a crazy river ride!
Leading up to the day of the tournament, we divided up jobs to make sure that everything got done and everyone contributed based on talents and schedules. Grace, being our most Mathematical and scientific thinker was in charge of calculating and measuring the measurements for the structure so it could fit in the tester base. Caleb, with a very creative mind came up with the story details and sudden events. Sam, being the most technical person, created the jig and worked the projector for our event depicter. I was the artist of the group so therefore designed the costumes as well as wrote the script in a poetic form. 
As for team choice elements, Grace recorded a lovely themed music she had played on her flute which we incorporated into the story. The poetry and rhyming of the script was also used as a team choice element.
So everything was going super well and smoothly, however, on the day of the tournament, my team and I were in for a few surprises…First off, Grace called in sick last minute. This was a HUGE set back. However, we had planned for someone to not be there so quickly came up with a plan B (full credit to Sam and Caleb during my melt down! Thank you guys!) The plan was that I would portray Grace’s and my part. Although there was an unexpected event of a no show team member, I was so thankful to have the boys help out and the three of us completed the task. If you want to see us perform our story and challenge, click on the video below!⤵️
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Overall, although we may not have scored 1st and took home nothing more then a participant ribbon, I am so proud of my team, considering what all of us have been through. As we move towards regionals, we have grown stronger together and have created an amazing new script that I can’t wait to share with you in my next post! And if we continue to work as a team, that is how we are going to win and take home the gold!
