Well that was one hell of an experience…

The last few weeks have been full of exhaustion and excitement due to one thing, Destination Imagination. This was my first ever time competing in a tournament like this, and I can sure tell you that it was memorable. Throughout the course of this project everyone was worn out, staying up late at night working on your solution the evening before the tournament didn’t do anybody well, but as February 29th came, we were all somewhat ready to go. Some could say that this was awful while others would say that it was their dream come true but as much as I hated it, I also really enjoyed it. As the years go on I’m sure that opinion will start to change for the worse, but hey, we aren’t there yet.Β 

To keep us on track we were lead by one curricular competency, research and understand. Having to think about this really helped guide me through the challenge and pushed me to create problems that I could research and solve. What this competency is saying is how can I research a problem, and solve it using different perspectives. I feel like I demonstrated an accomplished understanding because I kept on pushing myself as well as my groups members while also taking their ideas into account. I would’ve considered myself the leader for this project as I helped motivate my team and solved problems that popped up during this task. Even when things didn’t go to plan I was always trying to find a solution or make sure we can learn from the previous errors.Β 

If I said that the month and a half we had to work on this project went well, I’d be lying, of course things will fail and not go how you want but its the way you grow from them and thats what I think our team did well. My group consisted of myself and four others, Josh, Dries, Erin and Sophia. We then found out that our team challenge was Fine Arts which was based on photography. The basic idea of this challenge was to find a publicly available photograph and recreate it using photographic techniques while presenting a story to match the picture. To add extra flair to our presentation, two team choice elements need to be apart of the show that would express our interests or hobbies. To finish off the work we took part in an instant challenge where we didn’t know what it was until the day of the tournament. Instant challenges could be either a task challenge which involves building, or a performance based task which involves improv. The instant challenge is quite an important part because it makes up 25% of your overall score. Since the instant challenge helps your score we needed practice, to help us understand what it was actually like, our teacher prepared different types of instant challenges that would be similar to the ones on the tournament day.Β 


After meeting with our group and discussing the challenge we kicked off by writing an identification form. The point of this form was to recognize which elements of the challenge were worth spending more time and effort on. We read and acknowledged that the story would give us the most points followed by the new development so we said we’ll work on this for the longest period of time. Similar to other teams, we didn’t really follow these guidelines later on, our story didn’t make much sense and our new development didn’t have as big of an impact as we’d liked. This was probably one of the key reasons why we didn’t place very well.Β 

We had three more milestones from this point and they were all pretty similar. Each milestone was about forms that would help us identify areas that we could gain points from or areas where things could go wrong. Milestone two was still about comprehending our challenge and elements so we could gain the most success. We all explained to each other the things that we had to or must not do so we were all on the same page. Our third milestone was yet again more forms, this time it was about our roles and responsibilities. Since we have been classmates for months we already knew some of each others strengths and weaknesses, this helped a lot in finding the right responsibility for each team member. At this time we just wanted to get building because time was running out but there was still milestone four to complete. This was the last thing needed to be done before we could start the building process, we had to create a timeline for how long each segment of your prop will take. Having an accurate timeline helped us know what we needed to get done first because we knew what would take longer.


At this point we were bored of forms which was good for us because we finally got building, throughout these four milestones we were thinking how we could engage the audience with our story and make interesting props that would impress the audience. Our team came up with some great ideas and we reached consensus on having a space themed photograph displaying the first man on the moon. Now that we had our photograph decided it was time to select characters. Once again we all agreed on Dries and I as the two main astronauts and Erin and Sophia as ground control while Josh is the unseen character as an alien based off the Predator. I think the roles fit us as people because I would consider myself as a leader so being the main character fit my personality. We finally had some sort of structure to our solution so we started building for good, we divided up each task but I don’t think it was a good idea. In my opinion it would’ve been more effective to work on one aspect of the challenge at a time so we can all have an idea of what it will be like in the presentation. The way we did it didn’t really make sense because we didn’t know how everyone made their part. I was in charge of my our first team choice element, the rover. The rover would help explain to the astronauts that someone has been there before them and there could possibly be someone still there. I made this out of cardboard and styrofoam to best resemble a moon rover. Once the cardboard pieces were complete I then attached it to a penny board so it would having a rolling effect, this would also make it more realistic. We got scored quite highly on my element which made me feel good and I finally felt like my work was appreciated.

It was about a week before the tournament and this is when thing started getting crazy. As a group we needed to start putting our feet on the gas and make some serious progress. We had the outline of our presentation ready for our dress rehearsal and to be honest, it was better than I thought it would be, but it was clear than there was a lot of improvements to be made. We needed to bulk up our story and make it more detailed. The storyline for our project was that two astronauts went to the moon for their first time, they wonder if anybody has been their before them but since it was 2020 there has definitely been people before them. They explore the moon and think its beautiful until they see an ugly beast. This creature was alien that has probably been living their for its whole life; the two astronauts think it is hideous and up to no good but the mysterious beast leads one of them to a interesting location. The astronauts get a call from ground control saying they’ve been gone for ages but for them it only felt like minutes. As soon as they get down to Earth they are told that they were up there for two whole weeks. This shocks the two but they still want to go to Mars next year.Β 


Finally the day came, all of our hard work, time and researching all goes in to this one presentation. Luckily for us our time was 2:20 which allowed much rehearsal time to make us extra ready. We watched performances from other schools in our level, they were all fantastic and they put as much work in as we did. It was time, the clock hit 2:20, we were on stage. The next 8 minutes of our lives were down to this moment, will we make a fool out of ourselves, or will we be applauded by the whole class. The first two minutes went well until, our flag didn’t stand up. This was a problem but thanks to Dries he played it off by making a joke. We had finally finished our presentation, the appraisers came on stage and asked us a few questions about the solution and they we were off. Our first Destination Imagination was over. We headed to the awards ceremony and unfortunately won nothing except happiness.Β 

To sum up my first DI experience I thought it was great but also stressful. I learnt a lot about everyone in my group and it just made me grow as a learner. I’ve expanded my mindset due to this challenge and increased my group work skills. Overall, it was a great experience that I’m glad I took part in and kind of looking forward to Provincials.