Hello there, Aedan here. I’ll explain the title later. We are currently undergoing a very long project called D.I. You might have heard about D.I, but if you haven’t and you want to learn more about what it is CLICK HERE. D.I is short for Destination Imagination. Once again if your scratching your head like ‘why’s Aedan not telling me what this Destination Imagination thingy is?’ then just CLICK HERE. That was your last chance.

I was really happy with the group I was put in for my first year in D.I. I got put into the Improv group with Jackson, Taylor and Jordyn. I think we worked really well together throughout the ups and downs. We actually started the preparation for D.I in December even though the regionals weren’t until March. I thought this was a bit intense, but it turned out to be the perfect amount of time to be 100% ready on regionals day. I know what your thinking, ‘but Aedan, your improv, why’d you need 3 months of preparation?’. For our group there was a lot of research we had to do to be prepared for the tournament because we had to choose 8 cultures, 8 cultural treasures and 8 explorers to have knowledge about at the tournament. The appraisers would then choose 2 explorers, a culture and a cultural treasure that we’d have to use in our play. A lot of research went into our preparation for D.I and also many practice run through’s.

Throughout our preparation for D.I we were creating a google docs, which helped us better understand our challenge. I think our group did good because of all the preparation and understanding of our challenge. When the D.I regionals were coming right around the corner a great guy named Jack came in to teach everyone a bit about improv. Jack does improv lots and he knew what he was talking about. After doing some group activities with everyone he tought the improv groups some more. I learnt about telling a story through your actions and the beginning, middle and end of a story. Jack was very helpful to our team and we learnt some fun improv games from him too. After the 3 months of hardcore preparation it was time for D.I regionals.

This year Seycove (the school I go to) got to host regionals. This was really great because I knew my way around the school and lots of the volunteers. The opening ceremony was in the morning and when we showed up to school we thought we were perfectly ready. We were a little bit wrong there. For D.I you have to make a sign for the opening ceremony and your challenge so that the appraisers know who you are. We had made a pretty good sign the day before and accidentally left it at school. When we got to school for D.I. our sign wasn’t there. We were freaked out and had to quickly make a sign out of scrap paper. After the crazy opening ceremony we took off to do our instant challenge. Rules of D.I say that I can’t specifically talk about the instant challenge until after globals, so I won’t. I’ll just tell you that we did good and worked as a team great. After our instant challenge we went to watch some of our classmates perform.

Big shoutout to Space Cows. The Space Cows were a great seycove grade 8 team. They were really engaged in the skit they performed. Above is a picture of one of the members. They ended up coming in 1st. After watching some other challenges it was time for our own. We arrived at the Vortex to get ready. I was very stage fright at first. The appraisers were all ready to judge us. We got the signal to start our skit after getting given the unusual place, explorers, cultures and cultural treasures.

Overall our presentation was good with a few areas we could improve on. Taylor couldn’t come so there were only three of us. This was ok, but it was sort of challenging because I had to act as three different people. I think our group did good at being in character and using each other’s names. We also incorporated the white sheet well and showed the culture in an interesting way. Where we had a major fault was in the setback. We had a miscommunication about what the setback was and this caused us to loose major points. Our skit also got cut short due to only having 5 minutes to perform. Here’s a picture of our raw scores. They’re the scores the appraisers gave us during the performance.

I learned so much in my first D.I experience and I thought it was a great learning experience. Our group worked really hard together and I had to incorporate a lot about what I learned in our growth mindset unit to D.I. There were lots of ‘failures’, but our group fought through them and had a great time at D.I. We didn’t come top 3, but it was a great learning experience for provincials in April. Here is a video of our skit. Laugh all you want. I’m the guy that acts like an old lady.

So the title…. IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY ON DI!!! I wasn’t to thrilled about this, but it turned out pretty good because I got to be with all my friends. I am now 14 and I’m thrilled to be a year closer to getting my drivers license. Look out for my next D.I post that will be coming out soon. It will be about my experience in D.I provincials.

Until next time… Aedan Loughran