Destination Imagination Provincials was an exciting, skill-testing, problem-solving event that took the last few months to prepare for and present.  Since we presented at the Regionals Tournament, our group members (Sam, Lucas, Adam, Spencer, and I) have grown and we all learned from the mistakes that we made last time.  I’m glad I got the chance to present the project we had worked so hard on, in the way it was supposed to be presented.

Even though we came last in our category, I feel that we had a fun and strong project with a relevant real-life problem.  Our new and improved team choice elements show the unique skills and passions that our different group members have.  Our background artwork was impressive and unique.

The day of the Provincials competition started early at Kwantlen Park Secondary School in Surrey.  Different teams from all across the province came together to pit their projects against one another.  There was a lot of people there…  The students were all from grades 8 and 9.  We started the morning with an assembly where we were all welcomed and wished good luck, and then the competition started.  My team’s presentation was at 12 noon, so we had to wait from 9 am until 11:30.  This was a long wait; we sat and talked and practiced our lines.  We didn’t want to watch other presentations because we didn’t want to get intimidated before we had to perform!  

When it was our turn, we went to our assigned room and set up all of our props and equipment.  We were all pretty nervous by then; at least I know I was.  We worked fast and efficiently because we had practiced it before.  Then at 12 noon, it was showtime!

The performance went really well except for the fact that our backdrop fell over once and we messed up putting the weights on our structures; we could have put a lot more weight on them to gain more points, but we were worried we would run out of time.  Everyone remembered their lines, spoke well, and we kept up a good flow throughout the presentation. It was a huge improvement from last regionals.  I did not pay attention to how the audience was reacting to our performance because I was focusing so hard.  When it was it over, we got applause and some of the judges came and told us what they liked about our presentation, and then we packed up all our stuff and left the stage.

Some pictures of our presentation: 

At that moment I felt a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  The team felt strong and confident about our performance, and we were all happy that we were done.  We’d all been quite nervous!

From 12:30 until 2 o’clock we had another long wait.  We spent the time debriefing our performance and relaxing.  We were way more chill during this wait because we didn’t have to worry about our presentation anymore.

At 2 o’clock we had our Instant Challenge, which was meant to test our problem-solving skills under pressure.  We went behind closed doors with one judge and we were given a problem to solve in a limited amount of time.  We had to figure out how to transport objects down a ramp without them falling off.  We were given points on how well we worked as a team, how many objects we got down the ramp and how creative our solution was.  I feel like my team and I did a pretty good job on this, but the judge wasn’t allowed to give us any feedback.

After the Instant Challenge, which took 10 minutes, we had to wait until the last award ceremonies which were supposed to start at 5 pm.  Unfortunately, I had broken my big toe just two days before and I had to leave early because I’d been standing too much by then and it was very painful.  So my trusty teammates stayed to attend the award ceremony and to find out how we had fared.  We were disappointed that we came last; we had worked hard, we had changed and fixed up our project a lot since regionals, we had a good project and we presented well.  We all decided that we had lots of room to improve for next time if we do something similar next year.  We already thought of some things we should do to improve performance project next time, such as using a stopwatch to time critical parts like the weight loading.  I can honestly say that I’ve learned a lot of valuable skills such as worked closely with a group and using multiple media to present, that will help me do much better next time.