The nightmare has become reality yet again! Yes, we just finished our DI provincials competition and wow it was a lot…
If you read my other post on our regionals competition you would know how stressful, scary and did I mention stressful? DI really is. You can find that post by clicking here.
In case you didn’t read it or are just too lazy too, (which I know a lot of you are) I will do a quick recap for you…
DI or Destination Imagination is an organization that creates challenges for children of a wide range of ages to compete in. These challenges would include skills that you would be able to apply to the real world! I could continue to explain but why don’t I show you a video instead…
My Team
My team was called the Bean Baggers and we can actually work really well together if we try 😂. Here are their blog links so you can see their post about this tournament as well and some other cool things they may have posted!:
Our Challenge
My group had to create a bean bag launcher that didn’t include any electronics and was accurate enough that we could estimate where it landed. Allow me too explain… I am in the engineering challenge with my group as they are listed above…
Anyway too continue for our exact challenge quoted by the book “You must have a ordinary character who does not posses any supernatural abilities and they are having a normal day when a catalyst occurs then your modular device will save the day” So they basically wrote our storyline and we just needed to make it our own.
Story 📖
I did explain the story in my first post for regionals but there is no harm in doing it again for the lazy people!
Our story is based on a normal citizen on a walk around town when OH NO! She sees a mechanical arm throwing garbage into the ocean! Thinking she cant do anything about this she just continues her walk and goes to sleep back at home… She then wakes up in a dream where climate change has taken over the world it is hot, sweaty and people are barely surviving. She realizes what a horror this world is and she knows what she has to do to help stop it! She wakes up and reconfigures the device into a recycling launcher that launches bottles and recyclable objects into the recycling bin. She then passes out into a dream where the world is bright and sunny and climate change is but a un-worrisome subject. We explain how this has occurred and we then finish with a “SCENE!”.
Our story is based on climate change and its problems and we are informing the appraisers and the audience of what may happen if we continue down the path we are on.
Modular Device
Our device was a wooden mechanical launcher that was able to launch a bean bag over 100 cm away but how? Im not going to go into the logistics of how it works and what-not but basically is has stored up potential energy in the rubber bands and when they are released the beanbag goes flying.
Here is a video showing us launching a beanbag with our device for the first time:
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The Week Prior
So we are sitting in the sun, sleeping in and enjoying spring break when suddenly… BAM! School starts again… back to classes, waking up early and the one we were all not looking forward to the most DI. With my team winning regionals (WHOOP WHOOP!) we didn’t really do much over spring break because we didn’t think there was much to do. That was a big mistake because as soon as the day before school, it hit us… DI PROVINCIALS ARE IN 4 DAYS!!! All I know is that me and Eloise are stressing out A LOT. I had created an entire schedule for our week and it looked like this:
I know its not the best but it was rushed and I was stressing out by just looking at everything we had to do still.
Instant Challenge 🤐
It’s crazy how we have to write a post about this when we can barely say anything about it 😂. I will be very vague because I am under oath not to tell you until the end of June. In an instant challenge you may get a task based challenge or and performance challenge or you may sometimes get both! I feel my team did really well and we worked together smoothly and didn’t get in each other’s way (which I can tell you is a very good thing). My team even got max points in one of the aspects we were being judged on! In an instant challenge we are purely judged on our teamwork skills and our solution to the problem that was presented to us. I feel my group handled the stress and pressure of the instant challenge well and the end product was successful.
Awards 🏆
At the end during the awards ceremony our name was called for second place for our main challenge and first place for the instant challenge because unlike last time they did not put the scores together but instead did it separately. Of course we were confused and annoyed that we didn’t get first but the team that did must have deserved it. I hope that next year we can try to win the provincial tournament just like Regionals.
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THE END!!! 🥲
Apart from what I said about it being a nightmare I might miss DI, like us showing up to tutorial, meeting with my group and performing together! I just want to say that even though I may have complained I actually had a great experience.
CANT WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!!! 🥳
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you stay posted for my next posts! 👍