We Have Reached Our Destination

April 15, 2019April 15, 2019
Destination Imagination
by tamaras

“Guys guys guys guys THERE’S NO WIFI HERE”

On Saturday April 6th, I woke up at 6am, picked up some friends, and headed out to Collingwood to participate in Destination Imagination’s Provincial Tournament.

I, alongside Maggie, Morgan, Alivia, and Emily, participated in A Medical Mystery- The Scientific Challenge. After Regionals, we had a few things to change and make better.

Our performance was a hit. It sounds kind of funny, because it’s just an eight minute school performance, but it was a hit with our audience that saw us at Regionals. Flora the physician was a crowd favourite. When we were standing in line for the parade at Provincials, wearing no costumes and looking nothing like we did i our performance, a man recognized us and came up to tell us that we did an amazing job last time and “good luck” to this time. That was only the start. A large amount of people walked past us singing the theme song, or yelling “Flora” at Maggie when they recognized her when we were waiting to begin our performance. The room was packed with people when we performed as well. Parents, classmates, and other teams all came to see the infamous Flora The Physician.

It’s safe to say people liked our presentation.

In regionals we came first place in our challenge and instant challenge. There were a few things to change, but we were surprised by how little big changes there were to make.

[THE MAIN CHALLENGE]

ATTENTION: If you would like to know more about the challenge itself, look at my regionals post, because that information won’t really be explained here again!

At the end of the DI Tournaments, just before the Awards Ceremony™, each team collects their scores from their challenge.

These were our regional scores:

These were our provincial scores:

So what did we do different?

Really, we fixed our symptomatic. At regionals, our symptomatic malfunctioned, and we lost some points. So we fixed it. It didn’t leak, we made sure everyone knew their lines and positions when the symptomatic was being used, and we made sure to include it well into our story. Easy points for an easy fix!

We practiced more. In our regionals tournament, we practiced- but we practiced way more, and we memorized our lines better, and we planned out the whole presentation way better.

The comparison between our final scores were as so, with our changes:

[THE INSTANT CHALLENGE]

The instant challenge was a bit worse than our main challenge. When I say that, I mean that it was an actual disaster.

At regionals, we did the best instant challenge we had ever done. At provincials, we did the worse we had ever done. Although our teamwork was quite good, our final product was far from it and we were not afraid to admit that when talking afterwards. When we finished, we went and talked and we acknowledged that it was a bad instant challenge but that we wouldn’t let us bring us down.

It was our last Destination Imagination Tournament, and we decided we would go out having the best time we could.

So we did, and really we came out of DI this year with tired smiles, learning experience, and a trophy.

[WHAT I WOULD CHANGE]

The thing is, there’s always room for improvement. DI is a huge example of that.

For the main challenge, the only think I would have changed way the way everything went when performing. We were so prepared, we had everything ready, but when we got to the room we faced some troubles. My main issue was anxiety, it hit me like a truck right before we performed, causing me to forget a bunch of lines. We had a bit of trouble with the set at the beginning, but it wasn’t too much of problem.

For the instant challenge, I would change the way that we forgot about our end result and focused too much on the creation of our solutions to the challenge. I know that we could have come up with a much better solution if we had focused on it a bit more, but we also had some great ideas that were a little too impossible that we tried to use, so I know we should’ve gone with easier goals and ideas for the time we spent trying to make the crazy ideas work.

[THE END]

This was my class’ last DI. We have come a long way since the beginning. I have come a long way from being the only girl in a group of boys in grade 8, to coming first in my challenges in grades 9 & 10 in groups.

I have been so happy to get to learn and grow from my DI experiences, learning how to problem solve and get along with anyone.

I’m so proud of my team this year, all the work we did was amazing and in the end we came first and we did our best. We did good guys, and we never have to do it again!

Thanks to all the people who made our learning experiences with DI all that much better, and I hope it continues with other students for many years.

Toodles DI!

[BONUS]

Destination Imagination through the years:

Grade 8- Regionals, Provincials