Tag: Destination imagination

Destination imagination happens every year. This was my second experience with DI. I would like to talk a bit about last year to help my reflection with comparaisons. 

Last year was my first year with DI, I was a bit nervous because of what people had said about it, which mostly just it was a crazy amount of work, and that it sometimes didn’t turn out so well and people could get harsh. I got my group and was a little nervous to get started. Our DI team did not succeed very far last year. We had our priorities in total wrong order, and ended up coming in fifth for provincials, which didn’t really bother us because we felt we had actually done worse! 

Switching back to this year, we only had 1 other competitor in our group, and they were grade 9 students in PLP, so we knew them all quite well. This point will play a big role later on in the post.

I felt we had an exceptionally good DI presentation. We had the the “Game On” challenge, (If you want to read more about our first steps and the regionals competition the blog post is here!) and for our challenge we chose to focus on the Game Of Life as our game, and have humour integrated in. Our perspective on the challenge was a humorous approach on stereotypes and situations that you get put while playing the game of life. An example being we tried to make many jokes on the marriage aspect of life, because you can’t leave life without being married! We also made jokes about retirement and juggling everything as a adult. 

 

We lost a team member for our provincial tournament. Jessie was not able to make it to the tournament, so we had to plan around this. It put our team in a bit of a tight spot because Jessie was very important to our story and was definitely the main character. She had also memorized the whole script in the case that someone else had forgotten their lines, she could prod them with a line of her own to help the presentation move along. 3 days before the final presentation, we had to start to prepare without Jessie. We all took a bit of her lines, but Marshall took the most, becoming the main character. We all worked really hard for the last few days to prepare for a presentation, staying late after school one day, and working in our own time to remember the lines. 

 

Then out of the blue Destination Imagination just rolled right up. I wasn’t feeling to hot the morning of DI, but I felt a bit better later on in the day, but our presentation was almost right away in the morning. Our presentation was at 9:20 am, so we ran through our lines for awhile then presented. All things considered our presentation went really well, we had a few stutters and parts where people forgot their lines, but aside from that we were able to make people laugh, which felt really good. It felt good to get the presentation out of the way, and then all that was left was the instant challenge. I watched quite a few performances and ate lunch, and then it was our time for our challenge. The challenge its self felt like it went well, but afterwards I stepped foot into a situation that I have learned much from, and hope to try to avoid as much as possible in the future. 

 

I was speaking to another team about the instant challenge, we were caught, and disqualified. Talking about the instant challenge is against the rules and so we were disqualified from the whole competition. 

What I have learned from this is very important. I learned that when you know someone is upset, or angry, it feels worse to put it off and ignore it, then addressing it and trying to figuring out a win win situation. What I mean by this is, if you know you’ve done something wrong think about how that makes you feel, and then instead of being scared or fearful, address those feelings and find a way to let the other person know your sorry, or how you feel about that situation. I feel bad that I had to learn this lesson with the fate of my DI team resting on my shoulders, but I think we all may have learned. 

I also learned that even though DI is something that is extra curricular, and we can sometimes feel a little negative toward it, there are other people trying to enjoy it and to appreciate it, and are putting work into it, even if someone doesn’t want to be there, they have to realize that other people have really tried to put work in, and tried to make this a incredible experience for us, and that one should appreciate their work and effort. 

The last thing I learned is actually from PGP, and Ms. Willemse reminded me of it. If I had gone ahead and put my self in Ms. Willemse and Mr. Hughes shoes the outcome of the day may have been different. This is very important for the future and I don’t think I will ever forget it. 

All in all its the journey that matters not the destination, and even though it ended with a sour taste, the whole experience was actually very helpful, and informative. 

So in the end I learned a lot am a more educated person because of it. 

DI seems to have come and gone very quickly this year. So before its fully forgotten, and provincials is just around the corner, I would like to reflect and consider the tournament that has just passed (regionals). 

In Destination Imagination this year I was placed in a team with Jessie, Marshall, Lucas, Kai and Luca. I really liked my team from the beginning. We complemented each other’s strengths and weaknesses, while also being able to be honest and give people the hard truth. A lot happened in a little bit of time. We decided our challenge, (which we were lucky enough to get,) and we got our team name and the rest just fell into place. (With a little bit of shoving!) We decided that our team name would be the KABOBZ, a letter from each of our last names! We also started to plan around our challenge guide lines. We chose the fine arts challenge.

In this challenge we had to pick a game that we could tell a story about and share with the appraisers, when the time came. We also had to be able to fit all the props or costumes or even the backdrop into one container. We got to work right away by planing what game we would choose to complete the regulations of the challenge. We set out a bunch of different game ideas from everyone in our group, and voted on which one would be the best.

In the end we choose the game of life, and decided to focus on what happiness and success really means in the game of life. We framed the story around the fact that you can’t leave the game without having at least one kid, and being married. And at the end of the game the winner is the player with the most money, and that is the only way that you can win. So when we brainstormed our story we thought we would toy around with that fact. 

Now once we had a story plan and a presentation plan, we got to work. We decided on the roles for our group. Jessie had the role of creating the story, and helping to paint the background, Luca had the role of creating our technical element, which was a game of life spinner, lucas and Marshall were on anything that wasn’t very prominent, the music the team choice elements, etc, Kai’s role was to finish forms, and I helped Jessie painting and was the team organizer, we all had very equal jobs.

We all complete our roles and responsibilities piece by piece. I was really proud of the work we completed as a team and when we practiced I felt that we had all put time and effort into the final product and I was very happy because of that. 

 

We had our provincial competition on Saturday March 9th. I was preparing with my group for the most of my time, and then it was our time to present. I was a bit nervous, but I knew that for the first time, I was really excited to present because we were all proud of the final product we had created. The presentation went really well, aside from one little stutter with our lines, but we got lots of laughs, which none of us were preparing for! We were all a little shocked! 

After the presentation my whole group was super happy about how it had gone. In the end we got 2nd out of 2, but I think since we had fun, that’s all that really mattered!

Reflection 

This season of Destination Imagination went really well because I felt that my team worked so well complementing and helping each other throughout the challenge. I learned a bit about de stressing and feeling in control for once. I felt that I would focus my reflection on the fact that for some reason this DI I felt that I didn’t have to worry to the point where it got in my. I knew that my team would pull it together in the end no matter what. I felt this way becuase throughout the challenge we continued to stay on top of our work, but also the team was very creative and if in doubt I knew they would make it work. So what I have taken out of this is that if I am stressed just remember that my stressing is not improving the situation, but if I take the time to figure out the problem and take steps to fix it I will be in a better place!

Thank you for reading, and I hope you learned a bit about our DI presentation.