Introduction
It’s that time of year again! DI time! If you don’t know what DI is, check out this post. This year, I chose to do the Scientific Challenge, which was a first for me. The challenge this year is called Medical Mystery, and I am in a group with Alivia, Morgan, Tamara, and Emily.
Our Challenge
- Research the human body and medical conditions that affect the human body.
- Create and present a story about a medical mystery that affects a human character.
- Design and build a representation that shows the medical mystery and at least one symptom.
- Present an action or scene that is shown from two or more perspectives at the same time.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
Brainstorming
First off, we had to start brainstorming. The brainstorming technique that we used was ABC brainstorming. You set a timer for 3 minutes and then write down an idea using each letter of the alphabet. Some of the letters, like X, don’t end up being very helpful but most of them end up being useful in creating larger ideas.
Planning our Story
Once we had brainstormed, the next step was to start planning our story. We decided to make a parody of the children’s show Dora. Our story would be about Flora, an adventurous kid who believes she is a physician. When her friend Socks starts having mysterious symptoms, she needs to figure out what’s affecting him.
Building and Writing
The hardest part, for me, was the building. I was in charge of building the set, and building any props we need. This was a much more complicated task than I had thought. I had to completely design a backdrop and frame and then build them with my very limited skill in carpentry and painting. My entire bedroom floor ended up covered in a giant canvas painting – It was like playing twister to get in and out.
I designed the frame so that it would be both light and sturdy. Last year, our set nearly fell on us a couple of times and I wanted to avoid that. I made the base in a sturdy spiral sort of shape to minimize the tipping risk. It ended up working very well!
As the DRI of the group, I also had to manage the use of our time so that we were getting everything accomplished in an orderly fashion. This was very easy because everyone was doing everything necessary right on time! Our script was written, all of our information was researched, and we each had roles in the performance.
Practice makes perfect
It took a lot of rehearsing and running over everything we needed to do to be ready for the tournament. This meant many afternoons of our own time given up to practice, but we definitely didn’t do enough to be ready. For the provincial tournament, we have been rehearsing and practicing our lines so that we will have everything completely ready come the big day. When we presented at the regional tournament, we were not well rehearsed enough, and I forgot a line, which threw us off on our timing. Our symptomatic also didn’t work, but overall we recovered well and the audience and appraisers didn’t notice most of our mistakes.
The Big Reveal
Feel free to give our video a watch right here! Overall, I’m very proud on how we did, and I am excited for the provincial tournament to fix the mistakes we made here.
Preparing for Provincials
The next step of our challenge was to start planning for the provincial tournament. We started by creating “burn down” charts, to show how much we wanted to improve in each challenge area.
These charts were to help us to improve our raw scores from the first tournament to the second, and to show us how we can get there. The three parts of our challenge we wanted to improve on were our story, our embroidery team choice element, and our symptomatic. We followed these steps that we put in place for the month leading up to the tournament, and they helped us get even more prepared.
The Big Day
On the day of the provincial tournament, we were ready. We had been practicing and preparing every detail so that our performance would go as smoothly as possible. We first had our instant challenge in the morning, which went pretty poorly. Then in the afternoon, we had our main challenge. We tried to practice about an hour before we were scheduled to perform, but we decided that it would be better for us to not overthink it so much. We ended up doing our best performance yet. The best part was that in my costume, people kept coming up to me and saying how much they’d loved our performance at regionals, which was really neat. We got first place! If you’d like to see our updated performance, feel free to watch it right here!
Reflecting on my Experience
Overall, this was by far my most successful DI yet. As usual, it was full of ups and downs, but I’m confident that I did my best. I feel very proud of my group, and I think we ended DI on a high note.