Come on, Vamanos! It’s time to Diagnose? – Destination Imagination 2O19

Posted on by EmilyJ

Hola, soy Emily! This is my third year straight doing Destination Imagination, and our solution is, in my opinion, hands down the most unique and creative yet. This time we decided to explore the realm of parody storytelling, which through some crazy but awesome blends of ideas created a solution which is truly different and I’m proud to be a part of. It wasn’t all smooth sailing however (there were both metaphorical and literal cracks in our solution) but I can’t say it wasn’t a learning experience. So, without further ado, do you want to learn more about how the plot line of Dora the Explorer mixed together with a medical detective story can solve a challenge? You do? Fantástico! Let’s get started.

Hold on, before we dive into this, let me explain some things for those who are new to Destination Imagination. Every year, Performance Learning Program Students grades 8 -10 participate in a massive three month global competition known as Destination Imagination. Focused around inspiring students to work interdependently and to learn new skills, teams of typically around five members are given challenges relating to a certain topic, such as engineering, fine arts, or science. They then have about two months to prepare a “solution”, or a performance that meets the challenge requirements, and present it at their local regional tournament. If you want to learn more, or sign up a team for next year, click on the picture below.

I am in a team named the Designated Doctors, which is composed of Alivia, Maggie, Morgan, and Tamara. We decided this year to do the Scientific Challenge, which is known as Medical Mystery. It involves composing a story about a mysterious medical condition that affects a character, and creating a technically designed “symptomatic” and utilizing a twin perspective shot known as the double vision. As I had also mentioned earlier, we decided for that we should try doing a parody, and this lead us to Dora the Explorer, and the plot line in the picture above. 

Although the Destination Imagination Unit doesn’t come with a driving question, I find personal value in having one, so I decided to write my own. Due to the reflection on teamwork which I mentioned in my past D.I. posts (linked here and here), I decided I wanted to figure out: 

“How can I better synergize with my D.I. teammates in a way that everyone benefits” 

I will be reflecting on my progress towards answering this throughout the post. Now you’re probably thinking; this all sounds very exciting, but there’s not much use in me telling you this without you seeing what actually happened. Well, luckily we got our solution on camera: 

I’m quite proud overall of our performance (even with all of the bugs), but it didn’t come out of thin air. It took a lot of questioning, building, troubleshooting, and revising to get to the point we are at now, and it ended up being one heck of an adventure. In the spirit of Dora, our imagination journey is outlined below:  

Like always, D.I. started the week after winter break. However, unlike previous years I felt ready for it this time. I wanted to dive right in and start pitching all the ideas I had, but then I remembered the problems that came with of not understanding the criteria last year. So, instead of going in blind, I made it a personal mission of mine to put more time and thought into the recognize stage: 

What has made this D.I. season unique is that it started off with us choosing our own teams. At first I was thinking along the lines of “Who will I not fight with?” and “Who will have similar ideas to me?”, but then I remembered something we learned during our trip to Seattle. This is, that a diverse team is the most capable, and so instead of choosing teammates for my personal convenience, I decided to look for people who had a skill set different than my own. I feel that this is part of the reason that our solution turned out so unique and creative this year. Once we were in our teams, it was time to choose a challenge and define the requirements. Deciding on our challenge was actually, well, a bit of a challenge, because our group had some different ideas of which one we wanted to try (I wanted technical, and they wanted fine arts or scientific). However, remembering my driving question of learning how to synergize better, I came to the conclusion that the reason I wanted to do the technical challenge was the build a technical creation, and realized that I would be fine with doing any challenge as long as I could do this. So, I decided to go along with whatever everyone else decided, and it helped create a win win situation. I now realize that synergizing doesn’t just make help others, it also helps yourself helps avoid conflict and stress. After this, we outlined our requirements and were ready to move onto stage two.

  

“Logic will get you from point A to point B. Imagination will take you everywhere”  – Albert Einstein

Hurray! One stage down and four to go. Luckily, the Imagine stage is a particularly fun one. It’s where all of the crazy, genius, weird, and wonderful ideas that make up our solutions come from, and once we were given the green light our team couldn’t wait to get started. However, all of this creativity meant things could get a little insane real quick, and navigating it as a team definitely posed some challenges.

With the criteria still fresh in mind from Stage One, was ready to participate in some group discussions and share all of my ideas as soon as we started the Imagine phase. I had thought so much about all of the challenge points, and I knew exactly how we could meet all the criteria. However, the group didn’t like all of my ideas, but I refused to let them go as I couldn’t see any other options. Then, once again I thought back to my synergy goal, and also to something we recently learned in PGP, and decided to try seeking to understand rather than to be understood. Instead of pushing my ideas at my group regardless of their opinions, I asked them if they had any better options, and it turns out they did. We were then able to build off of each other’s ideas, and I realized that listening and understanding others is a key part of the answer to my driving question. Now that we were all ready to work together, the ideas came in truckloads. Everything that was put on the table inspired more and more creative concepts, and soon we had enough ideas for 50 solutions. This was great, but just like last year there was nothing keeping us grounded. As the ideas kept becoming more and more creative and out there, and we got more and more excited, we lost sight of what really mattered; the criteria. We soon had an excellent and engaging solution concept of a fantasy steampunk kingdom and a warrior princess, but it missed the point of the challenge. We tried to fix this by adding more ideas onto it, but just like a tower with a weak base, we knew it would eventually crumble under it’s own weight. So, at this point I had to learn the difficult skill of being able to letting go and starting again, but also being able to salvage some of the good ideas (such as the vampire disease CUTANEOUS PORPHYRIA). By doing this however, we sort of created a prototype outline, and were able to troubleshoot many bugs that would have come up later if we hadn’t done this.
  • Flora the Physician Concept Sketch
  • Socks Concept Sketch
  • Symptomatic Draft 1 Concept Sketch
  • Doctor Draft 1 Concept Sketch

Excelente! We’re making progress. However, up to this point was only map reading; now it’s time to cross the troll bridge. The Initiate and Collaborate phase of D.I. is when you get the chance to turn all of the great ideas you came up with in the previous phases into real, working products. This might mean making a set, or maybe some costumes, or it could mean building a drone in some cases, but no matter what your doing you’re sure to have fun.

Being our group’s time manager and the D.R.I. (directly responsible individual) for our technical elements, I had three main jobs. One of these would be to create our music team choice element, as it would be made through Garage Band, and the other two would be to keep people on schedule and build the symptomatic. A problem with scheduling in the past for D.I. has been people being confused with their jobs because they don’t have a record of what they need to do. To prevent this, I decided to send one out every night or so through iMessage, and this helped everyone significantly. Creating the symptomatic was a large task; looking back it would have been better to split it up with someone else, but I did synergize by working my the group to decide on and design the technical methods. I think that this is part of the reason that it turned out to be so successful (even though it’s function definitely needs to be improved upon for Provincials). A problem early on in this phase of the project was that a lack of action was being took in actually completing our assigned tasks, and I felt this was because the script had not been completed. In my mind, if I could create an outline for our script, it would help get everyone on track. So, I decided to write one, but one idea lead to another (just like during the Imagine phase) and soon I had an entire script draft finished. It wasn’t fair for me to have done this, especially since this task was already assigned to Tamara, but at the time I really felt there was no other way to get my ideas across. Luckily, Tamara was willing to take my draft as an outline and write her own script based on it, and I realized that a much better way to have handled this would have been to have reminded her to finish it, and then given her critique if things needed to be fixed. It may have taken a lot of work, but soon all of our solution parts came together and we were ready to move onto the next stage.

We’re so close! Just one more stage after this one, and we have our final solution. However, just because we were nearing the end, doesn’t mean there is not still work to be done. At this point, our solution was well on it’s way to being completed, but it hadn’t been seen all together yet. This was what the Assess stage was for; going through all of our work and seeing what, well, worked and what didn’t. There were so many good things we noticed at this point, but there were definitely some revisions to be made.

So we had the costumes, we had the backdrop, we had the script, the music, and pretty much everything else, we were ready, right? Well actually, there was small detail which our team forgot about, and that was that we needed to practice. The thing was, we really had meant to practice, maybe even have 3-4 full dress rehearsals, but for some reason, it never happened. This definitely was our downfall at the unit required dress rehearsal, and I thought at first it was because no one cared. Later however I realized it was because we hadn’t made a plan that was S.M.A.R.T, or Specific, Measurable, Active, Reachable, and Timed. Knowing this, I decided to set a singular, specific date when we could practice, and it was what saved us at regionals. After the dress rehearsal, there was also a good amount of physical revisions which needed to be done to our work. Granted, our set turned out really nice (thanks Maggie!) and was a lot more transportable than other years, and the double vision worked smoothly, but the symptomatic needed some serious changes. The problem was with our chemistry technical element, which would leak whenever the water would flow through it (check out the original design for it in the media library below). It took a lot of effort to revise it on my behalf, and I now realize that this could have been prevented with some simple prototyping. Luckily, the rest of the revisions were minor, and we discussed and fixed them as a group. I also found out that another important part of synergy is trust. I wasn’t sure if my group would be able to make the revisions we agreed on, but I decided to not interfere, and they ended up coming through, saving me a lot of energy and allowing them to express their ideas.

The Teams of PLP Celebrating Another Successful D.I.

We did it! After all of the trouble, the trials, and a whole lot of teamwork, all of the pieces of our solution finally came together, and it looked great. Now granted, getting to the tournament took a lot of stepping out of my comfort zone with group dynamics, but it definitely paid off. I learned so many new skills and realized things that will be crucial for Provincials, but most importantly, I had a blast presenting our solution with my team.

 

The day of the tournament crept up on our team a lot faster than we thought it would, and just like always some last minute scrambling was required to keep us afloat. However, everything got done, and we were able to sigh in relief when our full solution stood before us in the prop room. Now keep in mind, up to this point we’ve rehearsed once, maybe twice with our full script, and that quickly shattered any feeling of achievement. We hastily tried to throw together a rehearsal before preforming, but we were called up to the prep area before we could finish. I was anxious; and so was the rest of the team; what if we couldn’t pull it off? It was then that I realized something important. It didn’t matter right now what we should have, could have, would have done, because that was in the past. All that mattered right now, was going up there, and doing our best. So, we got together as a team, wished each other luck, and then went out and had a great time. Although some things didn’t go according to plan, we gave it our all, had fun, and most importantly, did it as a team. At this point not much evaluating or celebrating was going on, but by the end of the day both were coming in spades. More teams than ever before showed up to the regional tournament (we were competing against five others), so the appraiser evaluating was quite strict. However, this made it even more exciting when they announced we had won the main challenge and tied for first for the instant challenge. Our team was overjoyed that our hard work payed off, and congratulated and thanked each other for everything. This was truly a perfect ending to the first stage of our adventure.

The Personal Evaluation 

The evaluation stage of Evaluate and Celebrate doesn’t just mean being evaluated by others, it also means assessing your own work. Reflecting both back on what I mentioned in this post and events that were left out, here is a summary of what I learned, improved upon, did well, and can improve on for provincials.

Where do I even begin with this? I now know how to conduct a synthesis reaction, make a conveyor belt, create hydrological systems, and so many more oddly specific things! Yet, I think we all know that the skills learned in Destination Imagination always end up being a lot more than just challenge related things. For one, I now know how to build off of people’s ideas instead of shutting them down in favour of mine. I also now know how to clearly express my ideas instead of just taking over someone’s job when they are struggling. Most importantly however, being the time manager I have learned how to create a schedule that isn’t just for me, but for an entire team, and find a way to make it work for everyone.
There were so many good things that came out of our D.I. Solution, even though some of them aren’t that obvious. For one, like I previously mentioned I am quite proud of my work with the symptomatic design and the music, but I also think the script, the double vision, the embroidery, and the set was made incredibly well. As for the not so obvious parts, everyone was really supportive of each other, even when things got rough. We also took in feedback quite well at the beginning with our story, and built off of each other’s critique and ideas as we went. One of the highlights for me however, has to be the energy and enthusiasm that everyone displayed no matter what it was we were doing, which was present from day one all the way to the last hours of the tournament.
Destination Imagination creates so many opportunities for growth for its participants, and I always feel like I walk away better than I went in. As I talked about before, my teamwork and sharing of tasks improved remarkably throughout these two months, making sure I could hear other’s ideas before I pitched mine and trusting in my teammates’ abilities. I also worked hard to move forwards in my ongoing goal of sticking to the criteria, which can be seen in the symptomatic and costumes being well built and detailed, but not being excessive in areas where it wasn’t needed. One way in particular way that I grew from last year’s D.I. was being much more open to feedback. When my teachers told us to maybe rethink our story idea, or when my teammates suggested changes to our backdrop, I listened to and thought about their ideas, and made any necessary changes.
Although I can confidently say our solution is the best I’ve been a part of yet, it was not without flaws. During our performance, the symptomatic’s chemistry technical method did not work, and the flow was choppy from our lack of practice, along with some minor things such as pronunciations. Luckily however, Destination Imagination Provincials will give us a shot at fixing these details, and we are currently working to do just that. The problem with the symptomatic was one, the accessibility, as it was hard to move and use while presenting. I think we could easily fix this by having someone who is behind the scenes during this point turn it on and move it. The second problem with it was that the chemistry method did not work, which was due to the cap of the main bottle being screwed on too tight, and the bottles having leaks. To fix this, I will replace the smaller leaking bottles with larger ones that don’t have to be connected and am removing the cap. As for the issue with practice, we have already scheduled a date to do so and will most likely be removing some of the hard to pronounce words.
I talked about parts of it a lot throughout the post, but is there a final and definite answer to my driving question? Well, like as most other units, yes and no. Throughout these two months, I have discovered so much about synergy and teamwork and how to utilize this knowledge. I now know that seeking to listen to others before you speak your mind is a powerful way to build off of ideas, and that together, you can make any concept twice as good. I also now know that teamwork is all about communication and trust; you need to make sure everyone is on the same page and knows they can count on each other. I think the most important thing I understand now though, is that synergizing doesn't mean giving up something for someone else’s gain, but rather everybody working to support each other for mutual benefit. Not understanding this I think was part of the reason that I was so apprehensive to work with others, as I felt it would be to my detriment. However, even though I now know all this, I also realized that teamwork is something you can always improve at, so there will always be more answers out there. Hopefully, I will have some new things to share regarding this after Provincials.

Adios Amigos! That pretty much wraps up what’s happened so far. Don’t worry though, the adventure is really just beginning… 

 

 

 

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