Hello and welcome to a blog post about our PLP class’ first field study since grade 8. This field study was about Loon Lake. Loon Lake is a retreat centre located in Maple Ridge, and operated by UBC, that focuses on corporate retreats or overnight school trips. Our class went there for a 4 day field study to try and get us out of the classroom and into a new gear of learning. Retreats are important because they can be like a large shift in your working habits, by putting you somewhere new, doing something new, you begin to develop new habits and can generally gain a new perspective on your personal and work life.
Throughout the trip we did numerous activities. These included: a birds of prey performance, a visit to the extreme air park, canoeing, rock climbing, high ropes, archery, some heated game nights, and some great food.
During the trip we were asked to think about a goal that could be feasibly completed by the end of the trip. My goal was “Build strategy(s)/a plan that can help me find what I want to work towards the future goal of gaining as much life experience and knowledge as possible while making myself more determined to learn in the process.” I thought of this goal because I wanted to use the field study as an opportunity, and start of new habits that will help me make sure that what I decide to do after I graduate high school is influenced by as much knowledge and experience as possible. I wanted to do this because at my current stage in life I only have a rough idea of what I have in mind for the future, and I want to be sure of my future by graduation.
Over the course of the trip, everyone in the class made progress on their goal, including me. Although there wasn’t as much there that was brand new to me, (I’ve done quite a bit of outdoor activity in my spare time) I still felt that I was building new habits towards my goal. As part of goal was to try and see the future an activity can bring, as opposed to the possibly monotonous present of the activity, I was trying to see what kind of future each thing could bring me to that I experienced, and throughout the learning about being “ready”, (for being a pretty simple term it really is quite complicated) I think that I demonstrated this by engaging myself and thinking of personal examples where the learning that was being conducted could be executed.
All in all, I think that I completed my goal for the time at loon lake and made great progress toward my larger goal throughout, and after the trip. Thanks for reading,
Hello and welcome to this most recent blog post. This time, I will be talking about my experience with Destination Imagination. Firstly, a short explanation as to what the heck a “Destination Imagination” is. Destination Imagination is a challenge based competition that has teams compete against each other on different levels. The levels are: Regionals, Provincials, and Globals. Because there are so many teams competing for a spot at the global finals there are usually multiple tournaments before the global finals. But this year, the regionals were cancelled and teams were sent straight into the provincials. There are multiple challenges that a team can compete in which you can find on the Destination Imagination official website. My team was called “Yes”, and we competed in the scientific challenge.
This is our team photo, taken right before our challenge took place.
Our challenge centred around a mysterious object and a microworld. You may be asking “what in the world is a microworld?” And we did too. A microworld isn’t really a scientific term. What the challenge meant by a microworld is basically just a world, but microscopic. The challenge was to create a story that centred around a character going into a microworld and finding a mysterious object, which the character(s) would find the use/purpose of later on in the story. Our performance was given points for many different aspects. These would be our story, our microworld scenery (the background depiction of the world from a microscopic creature’s point of view), the mysterious object, our lighting effect (which was used to reveal or enhance the mysterious object), and our team choice elements.
You can find our solution to the challenge here, with a recording of the performance.
Here’s a description of our solution. Our main story focuses on a group of scientists who and currently studying a bacteria called Vibrio Vulnificus, which is a flesh eating bacteria found in coastal waters during hot months. The scientists’ objective is to find a “cure” for this bacteria, but little did they know it would come to them in the weirdest way possible. The scientists are studying the bacteria when one of them sees a button in the lab they’ve never noticed before, so naturally, curiosity overwhelmed the scientist and she pushed the big red button. The characters realize that they have been somehow transported into the sample that they were studying, and become cautious that the bacteria must be somewhere in there with them. Lo and behold, the bacteria begins to attack them shortly after they found a mysterious Y shaped object while searching around. Panicking, the scientists try to think of something they can do to stop this bacteria, and weaponize the object they have found. It easily kills the bacteria, and the scientists make note that the object could be an antibody, specifically for Vibrio Vulnificus, and get back to trying to leave the sample before another bacteria arrives. They find the button, which appeared to have shrunk with them into the microworld, and decide to press it again, brining them back to the normal world, but this time, with a handheld antibody, the key to the completion of their mission.
The most important part of creating a solution for a challenge like this, at least from my experience, is communication. What I mean by that is that if you want an exceptional solution, you NEED to get everyone’s opinion on each aspect of the solution you are creating, and you need to have everyone’s thoughts on the table. Our performance could have been better, that’s a given, because no matter what it is, it can always be better, but I believe that our skills and construction of the solution was good. The thing we lacked in was exactly what I just mentioned. Communication. During the time we had to create a solution for this challenge, it was often difficult to get a hold of team members. While we were in class, we did well at organizing meetups and such, but when we didn’t “have to” our group was not very active in trying to organize solutions. On my end, I believe that I could most definitely do better. If I tried to communicate like I sometimes did, I would just kind of wait for a response, but the action that I should take is encouraging communication or presenting a solution the next time I came face to face with my group.
Here is the participation award, given to us along with some cool pins.
Our team came 2nd in the main challenge, and took first place in the instant challenge (which I’m not allowed to talk about). These rankings were ones that our team was pretty proud of, with only a little bitterness for being 20 points short of first. Overall, I’m glad that we were forced to participate in this dreaded event, because despite the negative outlook most people took out of it, I think we all experienced at least a little valuable learning from each of our challenges.
Thank you for reading to the end of my D.I. reflection, and I hope you got something out of it,
