This term in maker we have been working on a program called Destination Imagination. For this program we picked a challenge, and were given a team to work with. The challenges ranged form improve to science. The challenge I picked was called In It Together, it was an engineering challenge. I think now looking back at all of the other challenges I would have picked the technical challenge. Even though the engineering challenge was up my ally when it comes to hands on work, I liked the performance part of the technical challenge. In the end I am happy about the challenge I was given, even though it wasn’t perfect. Our first performance was the regionals, from then on its the provincials, and than the worlds. Even though the regionals are considered just a practice round, I am happy that we have to do them before the provincials. I think that it creates a filter for all the bad thoughts ideas and mistakes. For example our team made a devastating mistake, when we miss understood our set length, and width for our structures, this basically cost us our central challenge. Just so every one knows a central challenge is what the main challenge is based upon, so in this case engineering. The only other challenge in the competition is the instant challenge. The instant challenge is a timed task that is given to you on the spot. They can range from a performance based challenge, to a task based challenge and any where in between.

There are many elements that I liked about regionals, including the reason I mentioned, how it acts like a net. Another main reason, is that it sets you up for preforming in front of a crowd. Even though, this might not effect me as much, some people that are shy or have stage fright might be more thankful. It also lets you realize your mistakes and overall polish your presentation, which as I have said before I am very thankful for. This aspect of regionals helped our group because it let us change any part of the presentation that was weak. In our case our group felt that instead of basing the one of the main criteria of our challenge the international issue on our script, we should do it the other way around. Also we felt like the international issue could have been added in to the script more often, and possibly a complete change of the international issue might be useful, and necessary. This will definitely boost our score up in manny different places. You might be surprised but, the amount of work we put in to our challenge was tremendous.

I spent over ten hours on the two balsa wood structures that were in the criteria for our challenge. Even though in the end I was ripping them apart to lessen the weight and size. In retrospect I liked this opportunity and even though some times that thought might have slipped my mind concreting that we almost didn’t get to present, I know now how luck I am to be apart of DI.