After a long grind to find the solution for the for Destination Imagination (DI) team challenge, it was time to present the solution at the DI tournament. Even though the end result was all that was seen at the tournament, the real journey was the work to get there.

The journey

It all began when I met with my group for the first time in the middle of January. It was then when I learned that we would be studying codes and incorporating them into a story. I was put in a group with people who wanted to complete the scientific challenge. The group included Emily, Austin, Kailey, Robin, and me. We all were excited to get to work on this project. In the beginning stages of our DI preparation, my group planned the journey ahead. We needed to decide what our story would be about before we began to plan. Kailey, said we should do something about food as a joke, but it stuck with our group and we decided to use it for our project. Now that we picked the plot for our story we used the tools provided by DI, they really helped us make sure that we were on schedule at all times. After we planned out how we were going to use our time, it was time to get to work. We began to work on perfecting the script, and preparing our costumes (cardboard fruits). We worked on our props (backdrop, costumes, and other materials used in our play) for the majority of our class time. We used our time after school for the script. In the days leading up to the tournament, my group and I needed to memorize our lines and practice running through the presentation. At this point I thought my group doing well at the tournament was a long shot. Even with all our practice, we came into the DI tournament very unprepared and needing to really come together as a group.

The tournament

I arrived at the DI tournament on February 25th ready to present all the work that my group and I had worked on for the past month and a half. We were presenting at 9:40, I was both excited and nervous about the performance ahead. When the time came to present to the judges, we were briefed on the rules that would be enforced in the room. Once the judges said “your time begins now” it was our cue to start our performance. During the performance my group and I had many problems forgetting our lines, but we recovered in time for every mistake. Right at the climax of our story my group and I ran out of time. We lost quite a few points for not finishing our whole performance. However, we still made it to provincials and will change our story so we have a chance to perform the whole thing. although we didn’t finish our story completely, the judges liked our plot and recommended that we continue to use this storyline in later competitions. The feedback from the judges helped us see what we need to work on most and what is looking good.

What is to come

Now that my group and I know what our strengths and weaknesses are we can really improve for provincials. The judge’s scores showed us that we really need improve our understanding of encrypting and decrypting codes, we need to simplify our story, and improve our team choice elements. I am really excited to continue to improve our DI story through provincials and maybe even worlds.