I have talked about Destination Imagination a couple other times, as I have consistently been in the tournament since I was in grade 8. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of DI is stress, mainly because I don’t enjoy it too much as it is essentially a project on steroids. Projects stress me out so naturally one that is one steroids will stress me out more than usual. Although, I am doing it becuase it is good for my growth as a learner and a person and, my teachers are making me do it.
I ended getting put into the last category I could possibly want to be in, which is, improv. I personally hate public speaking to begin with, acting is on a whole other level, then improv is way beyond that just because, you have to think on your feet and create everything in the moment. I always like to have a plan that is quite strict, so if I do public speaking, I will end up making script of some sort on the topic that I have to talk about, and I will read it over constantly. Acting is much worse because you have to change your emotions depending on the script which is adding complexity. With improv, There is not much planning I am able to do, except for practice improv itself. I got so stressed out that before the tournament, I developed a virus that caused my toungue to be inflamed thus causing me to have a lisp. I could only talk like “thith”. I was not able to pronounce my ch’s or my S’s. Everybody was teaseing me as I could barely talk, It got onnoying pretty quickly. I was only praying not to have it on the day of regionals.
Worst case scenario happened, I had the lisp on the day of DI regionals. The past few days leading up to that day I had noticed how often S’s were used in sentences. It came down to our presentation and I had to figure out a way to roll with the lisp. Instead of ignoring it and having it be an obvious onnoying factor in the skit, I decided to turn it into comedy. I ended up being a “ghoth with a lithp”. People thought it was funny as I ended up having to say words like “thubmarine”. It was funny now that I look back on it but during the show it was torture for me. I pushed through it and we ended up doing well, we ended up coming in first place for our age group. We also did well in the instant challenge and we came first in our category.
