Destination Imagination has always been difficult for me as a learner. I have always felt pressure, and stress, but this year, in particular, I have felt distant from the “DI Experience”. There are many reasons why DI isn’t my thing but hopefully, I can narrow it down to three different reasons. Now as a reader, you might think that I didn’t learn from Destination Imagination, and of course, that is wrong. In general, I think that this year has been a year of learning, with not only Canadian history, but also Chemistry, and algebra. Most importantly I was very connected  with my central challenge this year and thought that it was one hundred times stronger than ours last year.

Destination Imagination 2017

This brings me to the first point, disappointment. For any group, I think that not doing as well as you thought you were going to do, would be disappointing. Now add on to that, all the work that you have put into it for the past weeks, and the money you have spent. What if I said that this crushing feeling you get when you aren’t called up to the podium isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it all is the disappointment from others. Going to school the next day, and feeling the disappointment in your teacher’s eyes. The best part about DI is finishing your central challenge, but if the worst part is getting three out of four what can you do from there.

The answer is to improve, we lost many points for silly things like a team choice element, but now we won’t make the same mistakes. Some of the things we can improve on for next time are the sound producing materials we used to portray the unlikely location and the second team choice element. Unfortunately, when it came down to the actual scoring of these different rules and elements we got lower than most of the other teams, and with the accumulative score of both our instant challenge and our regular challenge we only came in third.

The strongest points of our performance were our story and our attraction. The appraisers loved how the fidget spinner moved and how it showed all of the different scientific concepts. The three different scientific concepts were gravity, Neuton laws of motion, and electricity. The last concept, electricity was shown in two different ways. We ran lights around the fidget spinner, and we lit up our first team choice element, the masks, with stands of lights attached to a battery and a switch.

The final improvement that we have to make for the provincial tournament is our audio that represents the unlikely location. Even though on the day of we had a sick soundtrack, our methods of presenting and creativity were not on point. For the provincial tournament, we are making a drum out of different materials you would be able to find at a store. We think that this will up our score by creating a personalized way to present the music to the audience. To fit this into the story we are introducing the drums to the villain, Millard, as a place to store the ever mysterious magic.

Now that I am finished with the regional tournament I think it is a good time to reflect on the creation of our presentation. When we first started generating ideas we had some troubles finding a good setting. We generated the ideas by writing settings on little pieces of paper, spending them out on a table and eliminating the ones that weren’t useful. We ended up choosing a planet in another dimension for our setting. The planets name ended up being Phoebe, and its inhabitants were Rocco, Roka, Rivi, and Remmi. This brings us on to our next part of the project the script writing. Three of our group members, Adlih, Melika and Kailey wrote an amazing script, that integrated our story, setting, characters, and attraction perfectly.

In the end, the script was a little too long and was edited and shortened to fit the performance. After we had finalized the script we set to work on creating, the attraction, backdrop, costumes, and props. Personally, I was in charge of making the fidget spinner with two different group members, immediately things started not going to plan.

Going into the final days before the first dress rehearsal we did not have the fidget spinner design on the back of the fidget spinner. We had a clear plan that we were going to get the wood, cut and paint it days before but, days started to slip by and we still didn’t have the resources. Then came the night of the first dress rehearsal and we still didn’t have the fidget spinner top. Surprisingly on that night, my two partners ditched me to figure it out my self. I didn’t give up because I knew that it wasn’t worth failing my group.

Using the resources I had at my house, glue, construction paper, and old poster boards, I was able to finish the top part of the fidget spinner. Even though it was only a mock-up it was good enough to bring to school the next day and we were able to present it. After this fall out we all knew we had to do better for the next dress rehearsal and I think we really stepped it up. When I think of all of the revisions that we made to make the presentation what it is today, I don’t think we would be able to do it if my team didn’t work so well together. I feel not only prepared, but also excited for the provincial tournament, and can’t wait for what it has in store.