Destination Appreciation

If you’re an avid reader of the bustling internet metropolis that is this blog of mine, you would be familiar with Destination Imagination and the various times I have done it. This year was set to be the last year we were ‘forced’ in to doing it, and now looking back, I have mixed feelings. 

Overall, this year definitely wasn’t my strongest year in any sense. Our team had a lot of potential (Logan, Luca, Jamie, Isy and I) but in reality, our challenge was just far too difficult and didn’t put a spotlight on the areas we excel in. Below is a link to my Regionals post and if you haven’t checked it out already you should as I discuss the creation of our presentation and our team work in it.

Destination Aviation

Our presentation at Regionals was a mess, and we had a lot of ground to cover in the 2 weeks of school we had until Provincials. Like most teams, we didn’t begin working on DI again until after spring break, and this left us with just 1 week to plan and execute our revisions. To do this, we made a few charts to help us make sure we knew what we needed to do, and how/when we would do it.

One of the revisions and changes we had to make that affected me especially, was the script changing as Logan wouldn’t be there for our performance at Provincials. His lines were divvied up between Melika and I and we both began memorizing the revised script. Jamie took on the role of making the plane fly as the rest of us didn’t really understand the whole situation with the plane. Right up until Saturday, the day of DI, Jamie was hard at work finding a solution to what seemed as though a never-ending task of making the plane fly and drop payloads successfully. 

When we all got to Collingwood on Saturday, we were ready. At this point there wasn’t anything we could do to change our presentation and we were just ready to get out there and show the Appraisers what we had. Unfortunately though, our Instant Challenge was at 9:30 in the morning, and our main challenge was more than 5 hours later, at 3. Atleast we got to do our Instant Challenge right away though. I’m not allowed to say much, but I can tell you that it went really well and our team is super happy. I surprised myself a little bit and played a role I normally wouldn’t. Overall we were really confident walking out of it and it help put us in a good mentality heading in to the main challenge.

When it came time for our main challenge there were a lot of different emotions within our group. Most of us were looking forward to having the weight of DI lifted off our shoulders as it certainly caused most of us a lot of stress. At this point we were all ready to go, we had practiced our lines over together a dozen times and all that was left was to get out there. 

I’m happy with how it went. Personally, I feel like I played my role really well. Our acting and performing as a group was great, and the overall visual and oral elements of our presentation were top notch. I’m really not even that bummed that the plane and payloads didn’t work properly. We all know how difficult of a challenge we were tasked with, and we tried really hard and at the end of the day it just didn’t go our way. 

As for how I felt during the performance, it’s quite strange. I remember as soon as my first lines came out of my mouth, I was freed of my nerves and felt comfortable. It’s funny actually, I was thinking to myself that for all the times I’ve walked in to Collingwood, I’ve never not had butterflies in my stomach. I’m always going for an important basketball game and it’s cool to see that DI has the same effect on me. It’s always the case that I let the aura and my expectations of myself get to me, and as soon as I get on stage I let go of all that, and I’m in the moment. Maybe that’s why deep down, even though I say how little I like DI, the feeling of overcoming the nerves and walking away proud of myself is addictive. It’s something that I think I’ll look back on in 5 or 10 years and realize how lucky I was to be a part of something like DI that better me in so many ways.

So with that, I’ll say thank you to my teachers. Thank you for putting me in a position to force myself in to a state of stress and nerves, because you knew it would make me a better learner. I knew I would eventually understand why we do DI, and today is that day.