♠️♥️♣️DI, Why Bridges?♣️♥️♠️

Welcome back ladies and germs. I usually have a more creative intro but I think it’s necessary to welcome every single organism out there, including coved-19. All coronavirus  jokes aside, welcome to yet another DI portfolio post. Destination Imagination has been quite the rollercoaster this year. As the process has had me up and down for months I haven’t had much time to reflect, so here we are!  To read all about DI and my experience with it last year click here! Anyway, as I previously said, DI has been all over the place this year and if I’m being 100% honest, it has been nothing even remotely comparable to my challenge solution last year. That being said, I’m going to take this post in an abnormal direction, one that is more subjective to my experience this time around!

When my group was first brought together, I will admit I was anything but excited. Obviously I had a bit of a rock brain going in and as soon as I recognized that, I changed my views and tried to connect and collaborate with my teammates. As we’ve gone on I soon recognized the assets that each of us brought to the table. Skipping ahead a few weeks and there is still some conflict between team members but we have come a long way, especially considering our group dynamics. Being the only girl in my group of five did admittedly feel intimidating at first, which is very abnormal for me. But I realized that I was put in a situation that was going to be challenging because of that group dynamic and even more so due to the challenge we selected. Engineering involves math and science more than anything else. That alone made me uncomfortable because I’m not someone who can easily understand challenge requirements that are all about measurements, weights and efficiency ratio’s. The recognize portion of this project wasn’t just about learning the challenge requirements, or understanding the scoring this. Instead it was a mix of both understanding the challenge in full, finding ways to work peacefully with my group, and most of all step outside my comfort zone. Now almost two months after we started, I can see that I achieved in understanding my challenge and collaborating with my team. It was the fact that I failed to take risks that weighed me down.

Thinking in the most creative ways possible is what allows for success in DI. That along with a strong sense of teamwork, intuition, and leadership are what make for a great DI solution. In our initial team com react, we out each of those thing down and committed to achieving each of them. Overall our challenge solution is strong in some areas, just not the ones that will put us on top. As a group we completely failed in communicating and appointing a leader. All of the work would pile onto one person at a time and left us very divided. Leading up to provincials I’m striving for a first place trophy that we deserve. Whether that is for our challenges overall success or the success of our team really matters to me this time. I want to take risks and step outside of my comfort zone and into the topics and concepts that I’m not as strong with. While I did contribute to the solution in writing our story and working with the set, I didn’t do enough with our bridge and load. Provincials is only a few weeks away and I am determined to not let anything, whether that be my teammates, time management, or my own thoughts get in my way. We have come together as a group and discussed all that needs to be done in order to succeed. We need to allow for everyone’s voices to be heard and I cannot express enough how much we need to practice and prepare. Improvised acting and superstitions aren’t going to get us to where we want to be. Practice makes perfect and we were nowhere near perfect at regionals. For provincials I honestly think that we should edit our contract. We need to practice better communication between DRI’s. We need to practice better teamwork with preferably much less conflict. And finally we need to have every team member put in the same amount of effort in order to succeed. 

Over the past week or so, and into spring break and the return to school after, I plan to work hard on the parts of our solution that need help. Our set piece is going to be flawless and our bridge will be much more reliable than the last. I’m going to be able to put the bridge together even if it’s not my part in the actual performance. My determination is there this time around and I’m fired up for the next tournament!

Thanks again for coming to my TED Talk: Quarantine Edition!

✌️Ciara