Hey guys! Its been quite a while since I wrote a blog post but here I am again! Well I’m sure you’ve chosen to read this blog post because of its awesome name, Time Machine. I hope the explanation satisfies you because is a long one, in fact its so long, it’ll be the main focus of this whole post today! Yeah, I know its going to be a lot but I’m going to make it extra fun so buckle up and without further ado, lets get started!

Time Machine is a capstone project to finish off PGP with a band and it all started with a book called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” by Sean Covey, which we studied before we started this. We made countless creative reviews (actually just 4) and did workbooks associated with the book. We ended with that and I was so relieved but then came the PITCH FORM! Let me explain, our teachers told us if we could take one specific habit from the book, put it in a creative form, and send it in a time machine to our past selfs, what would it be? Well, they had us fill out a pitch form to help us get started with ideas. Here is mine:

It took me so many revisions, changing sentences, and words to get this approved but once I did, the hard part began. If you read my pitch form you know what I am doing but for those of you who are lazy (like me), I am creating my own board game! Sounds hard and cool right? Well thats what I thought exactly at the beginning, and what I thought throughout the whole process of designing the game, mostly the hard part though. I went through so many frustrating moments trying to figure out how to create the rules and how to cover up any loopholes that a player could do to cheat. Now that was difficult! I had never gone through such an intense process consisting of emotions like anger, confusion, happiness and sadness.

At one point I decided to give up and start fresh. I wiped everything off the whiteboard and started completely from the beginning. The explanation and rules of my game that I sent to Ms. Willemse was quite confusing even to me so I had to stop and re think my whole idea. In the end, I came up with a much better solution but we will get to that. After I started thinking about the new solution, ideas started flowing in like crazy and everything started to make sense. I finally worked out all the loopholes and cheating methods until I was pretty confident that I had accomplished what I wanted. I’m sure that there probably still are some things that need work on, but I’m satisfied with my result and I hope you guys are too!

Now lets talk a little bit about my board game and its rules. It is based off of the seventh habit, Sharpen your Saw. Sharpening your Saw is about constantly renewing yourself in 4 main categories, your Body, Brain, Mind, and Soul. I wanted to create something that would give you practice at renewing yourself until you would automatically do it in your daily life. I chose making a board game because I am a kid and I think that if I sent a board game back to my past self I would enjoy it instead of something simple like a couple words on a page telling myself I could do better. This video below will explain it all and you’ll get to see my creation; the board game itself!

That is my whole game explained fully me none other than me! I really hope you guys enjoyed that because I put a lot of effort into that and literally spent 2 hours editing so….

Something I would have changed about my process is when I first started with the idea I didn’t have even a design in mind, I figured all that our after I got approved. Next year, if we do this again, I would like to have some design or concept in mind so that I don’t waste valuable building and constructing time when I get approved. Nevertheless, I absolutely love how this turned out and I am very proud of my work. I still can’t believe how much I’ve accomplished within the month of May  to right now!

This brings us to the end of our post, it was a long one but if you made it this far, thank you for reading (I really really appreciate it) and see you next time!

~Malaika💛