So, about a year ago, I wrote this post about Destination Imagination. Destination Imagination is essentially an organization that presents groups of students from different schools around the world with “challenges” of some kind– I.e. writing a skit or creating a transportation device –with a lot of specific rules and instructions.

The challenge I decided to do this year was the improvisational challenge: create three skits, with three minutes to prep and present each, all based around the same prompt but with a different genre and including a different stock character each time.

Because it was improv, we wouldn’t get assigned our prompt, genre and character until right before our three minutes began. However, we were given a list of all the possible characters, which we divided up between the five of us, and we were asked to choose fifteen genres off of a list (which I was really glad we were allowed to narrow down, as I was not confident in our ability to improv a kabuki skit).

What we were allowed to choose ahead of time was our box of props (officially called a “box o stuff”). We were required to bring a 13″ x 13″ x 13″ box containing all of our props, including any accessories we wanted to involve in the skits. Our box of props included a wig, some faks glasses, various fake weapons, some plastic food, a foam microphone, fake flowers, a flute, and a melted fake gem, among other things.

But let me talk specifically about those last two. As part of our challenge, we had to create two “team choice elements”: things that reflected our interests and abilities as a group. Our first team choice element consisted of musical cues played on a flute, representing my group’s interest in music, and specifically in learning to play musical instruments. Our second tesm choice element was a little more ambiguous; what was intended to be a fake diamond made out of a playdough-like substance (representing our creativity and tendency towards visual or special learning) ended up melting and becoming a miscellaneous prop that we had to learn to incorporate into different situations and use as different things. Unfortunately, we didn’t really do much to make this team choice element stand out, and I’m honestly not sure it was really clear what it was supposed to be.

Our second team choice element probably falls under the category of Stuff We Have to Improve For Provincials.

That’s right. We’re going to the second round of competition of Destination Imagination. Which makes sense, seeing as during regionals we came in first place in our age group and category.

Tag yourself, I’m the excited child wearing muggle clothes.

…We were the only team in our age group and category, so we came in first place by default, but that’s just a technicality.

Anyway, so we’re going to provincials. Look out for that blog post as a follow up sometime soon. Until then, however…

Toodles.