A Destination Your GPS Won’t Find

Destination Imagination was quite the experience. It was the first big group project I have done in a while that really requires all team members to be in sync. I always get worried when I hear we are doing a group project. I like to always be the one in charge, this is why I work better on my own. So for these group projects I just pray I’m put in a group with people who don’t feel the same way. Now, I was very pleased with the group I was put in (Kiefer, Raina, Kai, Lucas). However, there were a couple of people that were like me, they wanted to be in charge. I’m not trying to point fingers though, not at all actually. I’m here to explain how I overcame my habits and worked together with others, collectively, as a group.

Wooden “Treeko” that Kai cut

For some strange reason, as soon as our group came together to discuss our ideas, it felt as though we were already on the same page, even thinking of doing the same thing in some cases. It took us no time at all to decide our storyline. There were plenty of ways we could implement team choice elements and there was something for everyone to get behind. After this though, we sort of took a dark turn. We were assigned stacks on stacks of seemingly unnecessary planning sheets. For something designed for kids, the people at Destination Imagination sure don’t know how to make a planning sheet. I spent quite some time just figuring out how to do the damn things. I kid you not our group spent over two weeks with these planning sheets. I believe this planning was what caused most groups to be panicking the week before, trying to finish everything. Sure, a couple of them were helpful, but most of them didn’t add to our final product. To be completely honest, we didn’t need all the planning, and I know there are many more people who feel the same way.

A grappling hook/spear I made that hooks on to the “Treeko”.

To prepare for the second part of DI, the instant challenges, the teachers – along with help from a couple of grade 11’s – set up multiple practice challenges. This would help us develop our individual roles and build the confidence we would need to succeed in the actual competition. For the first few we did very good, placing first or second in the class. These first challenges were almost all task based, as oppose to performance based. Later on we did more performance based challenges and this is where we began to dip in the rankings. We were quick to realize our strengths in the task challenges, and in the last few performance challenges we implemented some of those skills to help us succeed.

A digital draft of the title Page of the cardboard ‘book’ Raina made

The lake scene Page from the cardboard ‘book.

Anyways, now we’ve got the bad out of the way let’s focus on the actual project. I hate to highlight all the bad about this because it makes it seem like it killed our project, which it definitely didn’t. Overall we had a very strong product, from start to finish we were ahead of most or even all groups. I think our work ethic helped a lot with this. For instance, one day Kiefer said he would build the boat. He came back a couple of days later with a five foot long wooden boat with wheels, that could seat two people. We didn’t procrastinate, once something was spoke of, we got it done. People were amazed that we had so many pieces in our presentation. The reason we could afford to have all these pieces is because we didn’t stretch out the building time.

Enough of the building, let’s talk about how it went. Personally, I feel as though our presentation went very well, especially seeing as many things went wrong throughout. We were quick to improvise and we tried to make it so there was always someone talking or something interesting going on, to keep the audience engaged. One of the most surprising things about our presentation was the fact we actually finished within the allotted time. We were so nervous that it was going to be too long, but it ended up that we had roughly 25-30 seconds extra, which is actually great. However, we did miss out on quite a few lines so I don’t know if it will fit next time. Having said that though, I doubt we missed 30 seconds worth of lines. Overall, we are very proud of the work we accomplished.

Our instant challenge was also a success, an even bigger one actually. We scored a perfect 100, which I was pleasantly surprised by. The reason I was surprised because as I said, when practicing at school, we were not very good at performance based instant challenges. Though when we were tasked with a performance based one at the actual completion, we aced it. I think the reason we did so well was because the challenge we were given was one that while someone was talking/performing, the others could be thinking up ideas. A great example of this was when Kiefer was performing I was thinking of what I could do. I just swooped in after he had finished and performed the penultimate scene without telling anybody I was going, let alone what I was going to do/say. Again, I was very proud of our instant challenge.

Our scores

All in all, Destination Imagination was a big success. We had a lot of fun, built upon our teamwork, and in the end we’re very proud of ourselves. Now, on to provincials.