Hello and good day to you all! Welcome back from the break! As you may know, we started this year as a normal one, little did we know there was a…surprise waiting for us just at the end of December. Since March 16th, me nor my fellow classmates have been to school and we are now in the midst of working online! It’s a pretty interesting experience to say the least, but we are all working through with it. You may ask, how we were going to follow through with a certain tournmanent, Destination Imagination. Well some of us assumed that we would be cancelling it, considering the Provincial Tournament had been canceled due to COVID-19. But the teachers, relentless as ever, decided to keep it going and we tried to find a way to present online to them. It was a different encounter, and it was up to us as a group to figure out how to present our skit to them. It all started 4 days before the tournament on April 2nd. 

The teachers had announced that our group had to meet at least twice before the tournament online to figure out what to do with our challenge. Our group met Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On our first meeting, we quickly figured out the acting, as it was pretty self-explanatory, we just had to get over the awkward and cringe of acting over camera. Our 2 biggest problems? One that we ran into last time, not following each other’s cues or not picking up on what someone is trying to do too early the skit along and two the sound effects. We decided to tackle sound effects first, considering that we would have more time to figure out our communication and cues problem. We came up with the plan that by Sunday, each of us would have at least 2 sound effects to present, just in case Noah didn’t have them, since he was our primary sound guy. I tried to find things around the house that I thought would help, and I did find and use materials like newspapers, but I wish, even for Regionals that I had tried a bit harder to find materials that would really help. Regionals I admit I did do a bit better helping to find sound effects, because we were all together as a group. When we were told we have to still present to the teachers in an online room for Provincials, I found 2 sound effects and stopped myself there, telling myself that two was enough. In reality it was, but in my mind I knew that I should’ve tried harder, which is a goal I’m setting for the future. Even if I feel that it’s enough, I still want to push myself to keep going, not only for the benefit of my grades, but for the overall product of my team. 

Once we figured out the sound effects, we only had one obstacle to tackle. We figured it would be even more difficult to not overlap each other, because we were going to be online so taking cues was as important as giving cues. So we met up in an online zoom room and practiced giving cues, which means adding in who exactly you’re talking to, or what you want the person to respond with. We practiced taking cues from Anthony, who was our narrator, and he moved the skit forward with his cues. So the group and I practiced that while Noah added in sound effects, and in the end we weren’t looking to shabby. I was so proud of how we decided to tackle our obstacles head on and we were able to overcome them. I wouldn’t say we were absolutely amazing, but we had definitely found a way to present, in which we didn’t look like weirdos. Most of all I was proud of how we worked to together, and got to have fun in the process. As we were meeting, we had a few laughs and I couldn’t be happier to work with this team, and I couldn’t be more proud of our journey together and how we decided to overcome obstacles. Now all we had to do was present…

Its not as scary as I’m making it sound, but it still was pretty stressful. But it went all smooth, and we finished with under a minute left on the clock. Our instant challenge went pretty well, and we were feeling pretty confident going into it because we had done pretty well with our challenge. We were cut off, unfortunately, as the time went out, but we were just about at the end of our skit and it was predictable as to what was going to happen. 

I feel that I Accomplished my competency of research and understand, especially in these circumstances, we were required to find a way to present the solution to our challenge using an entirely different perspective. I could’ve been more productive, and I mentioned this in my *REgionals* post, during the start of this journey, especially during the research of the powers. Honestly it wasn’t until close to DI where I started to freak out, and thats when I got my act together. 

I think my performance throughout this experience of DI 2020, was better than last years because I helped more with the nitty gritty stuff as well. I completed all the forms for the team, which I didn’t pay more attention to last year. Overall I do think I brought my grade, that I assigned to myself for regionals as a Developing, to an Accomplished. I was also very lucky to work with an amazing group, Anthony, Emily, Noah, Rhiann and Jude!

See you in 2021 Di!

~Malaika