Our Journey to Destination Imagination Global Finals – 2018

  -Trisha Rajganesh

“And in 3rd place.. The Musicals”! And just like that we were going to the Destination Imagination Globals Finals. It was our first year in DI and it seemed like just yesterday we were celebrating our victory at State and here we were in 3rd place at Regionals. My team and I were so excited to go to Globals. All this time we were preparing and practicing and it finally was paying off.

Hello, my name is Trisha Rajganesh and I am going to tell you about my experience going to DI Global Finals in 2018. Destination Imagination is a non profit organisation. It helps kids get ready for the real world and teaches them all kinds of things. DI runs a competition that has teams compete at State, Regional and finally at Globals.  Teams are judged based on their performances in a Central challenge (that they prepare for through the year) and an Instant Challenge, that requires quick thinking at the last minute.

Global Finals are held at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.  Since Southwest has the least restrictions on baggage, we packed all our props and flew Southwest from Oakland to Atlanta and then rented a van to reach Knoxville the night before Opening ceremony.  On the first day of performances, we were all jetlagged. I sleepily got up and got ready for the day. We ate breakfast and drove to the hall where the presentations were. Our performance was the next day, so today we could lay back a bit and watch others present. We got to the hall and went to the category we were doing called “Inside Impact”. In Inside Impact, you have to solve a community need and try to help out. The name of the challenge varies each year. The challenge we had chosen was to cheer up elderly residents in nursing homes, with music and games. We watched the first performance and it was amazing! Now I knew that we were competing with some amazing teams. After we finished watching the performances, we went to the Opening ceremony. It was so grand! There were lasers and lights. It was so much fun! After that, we went to our room to rest. Our big performance was the next day.

Central challenge performance day:  We got up and got ready. We went to the hall and got the final touches to our props done. We were all so nervous, but ready to go. We got in the presentation hall and I could feel my heart beating. The pressure was on! We finished the skit that we had rehearsed so many times, but got cut off as we were running over time. I thought that we did well though. After the performance we could relax a bit. We went to the pool and splashed into the cool water which was refreshing because it was boiling outside. We all agreed on our food choice and had a great dinner at Olive Garden. Tomorrow was our Instant Challenge so we had to get good rest.

Instant Challenge day: An Instant Challenge or an IC is given to you and you have to solve it on the spot while you are timed. Sounds hard right? Well anyways, we finished our IC and we went to see some other teams perform their Central Challenges. Many props were so good!  After that we went “Pin Trading” which is where you trade pins with other people from different states and countries. I got so many cool pins! Later, we made costumes out of duct tape and went to a duct tape costume ball. It was awesome! There were some people who worked on their costumes for 10 hours!  We ate dinner and went to the hotel to get some sleep. It had been a long day.

On the last day, we got to relax for the whole day, as we waited for the results. We went to a game show and watched some more performances. We went to the souvenir shop too. I got a keychain, a pin trading bag and a DI shirt. After that, it was time for the closing ceremony, where the winners were announced. DI was fun but it had come to an end. The closing ceremony was as grand as the opening ceremony! There were lasers and big light and glow sticks! Even though we were not in the top ten, it was was fun to find out who was. After the ceremony we went back to the hotel. The next day we flew out of Tennessee.

Destination Imagination was an experience of a lifetime. It was so amazing and it taught me so many things. I definitely will be doing DI for the years to come.

Our team:

Managers – Sanjay Anavekar and Om Anavekar.

Team – Trisha, Avinash, Soham, Om, Hari