Standing in front of the green duck tape line into the library, my heart was racing so loud I could hear it beating. The talking in the audience grew louder as I wondered what they were saying. Worries of messing up filled my head. What if I forgot my lines? What if I mess up my song? What if It sounds bad, or if I play the wrong chords? As the challenge master asked us questions I took some deep breaths, trying to focus on the task. When the challenge master asked if we were ready, the only thing I could say was, yes!
Us moments before beginning out presentation.
Destination imagination was many things, a big one being stressful. The countless nights of not getting sleeping well, worrying about the project. As this was my first ever DI experience I had no idea what to expect. Not knowing what to expect there were a few things that stood out to me in this project, teamwork, communication, and responsibility. Within the planning, building, and presenting stages, we needed to have these things to make this experience a success. I chose the blast from the past scientific challenge and we focused on problem solving. Specifically, how might we employ strategies to solve a challenge? Our group used many different strategies to come together as a team and create a successful presentation with I first place finish!
First place ribbon from regionals!
Let’s start with the planning process. During this process, we got to know each other. I learned about my group members’ strengths and the things they enjoy. When we were first put into groups we did some team-building activities to get to know everyone. I learned that we all play basketball and we all play an instrument. Knowing these things brought us together. We built a sense of community and trust. To have a strong project you need to have a strong group. Everyone needs to communicate and be on the same page. To ensure everyone was being a team player, we created a team contract. By doing this I was able to learn my group members goals and values. A few key points were never immediately reject an idea, always do your work to the best of your abilities, and treat others with kindness. Doing this gave our group a solid foundation to build off. We could keep the group in check and always look back on it for support.
This is the team contract we created!
Once we knew how we were going to solve our challenge we started to build. Speaking in general terms, we made our solution related to covid 19. I was in charge of making the puppet and an original song. This song was about the struggles and memories everyone gained from COVID. Our puppet was powered by hydraulics. I have never used hydraulics before, but I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to learn a new skill I wouldn’t be able to learn anywhere else. After doing some research, I was able to gain a full understanding of how hydraulics work. I then applied this knowledge while drafting and building the puppet. I love to play guitar, sing, and write songs. For one of our team choice elements, I chose to write a song. This song is completely original and something I made up in my room, just fooling around with some chords and words. Another key part of this project was writing the script. This was a challenge for our group. We all had unclear ideas of how we wanted the story to end. Next time I would ensure everyone was on the same page before writing the script. Our team did work hard to end up with a finalized script that was very strong.
What’s the point of planning and creating a project if you aren’t going to present it anywhere? In this project, we presented our solution to three appraisers. There was also a challenge master and an audience watching. The challenge master and appraisers were all so kind and truly cared about the presentation. Their kindness made it less scary to perform and gave me more confidence. During the presentation, we learned how to go with the flow. Now I don’t mean this in the fact that no one had lines memorized. I mean this as in problem-solving on the spot. While performing the puppet’s arm fell off, resulting in water spilling everywhere. We were a little thrown off by this but we didn’t let it affect the rest of the presentation. This was my first time performing one of my original songs and I am so proud of myself for doing it! I worked so hard, and it felt so good to hear everyone telling me how good it was! I learned that I can write and perform a song that people like. This event has given me more confidence in my performing and songwriting!
Before writing this blog post if you were to ask me how I felt about DI the response would be very negative. I think this is because DI is hard, and as humans, we do not like hard things. DI is also real. The things you learn through this outweigh anything I could have learned about the CPR (no shade to the CPR). I learned how to communicate with a group, share ideas, be accountable for my work, present to strangers, work well with others, and be a good team player. These are all skills that I have to and will have to use every day, for the rest of my life. DI is hard, and DI is painful, I did cry a lot! But DI is worth it. What I gained from this experience outweighs all the work I put in. I say this now, and at the next tournament I will ask myself what I was thinking, but I know after all the chaos has settled down, I will be finding myself thinking about this. I will remember all of the things I have gained from this that not everybody gets a chance to do. I am so proud of my group for everything we accomplished including our first-place victory! Great job Cam, Sunny, and Claire! All of our hard work paid off! Now we have a little break, and we will do it all again at provincials!
Siddy Giddy out ✌️