Joyce Meng, a senior in Northern Virginia in 2004, wrote an essay on Destination ImagiNation for her college application to Harvard University. You only need to read the essay to understand why Joyce was accepted to Harvard on early decision. When asked to describe an interest or activity that has had particular meaning to her, Joyce wrote:
There’s a certain confidential, nearly scandalous sense of gratification when we dress up as pickled vegetables and attempt to take over the world. On the other hand, demolishing balsa wood structures that weigh no more than a nickel by subjecting them to excruciatingly large amounts of weight may suit your tastes more. Just last year, we hosted a dance contest between Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley with Lisa Marie’s adoration and affections at stake. And if you stick us in an empty room for seven minutes with nothing but a few sheets of paper, a balloon, aluminum foil, some paperclips, a paper bag, and a few inches of tape, we can assemble a fully dressed orchestra and perform a live symphony.
For my Destination Imagination (DI) team, the phrase ‘the sky is the limit’ is misleading. We prefer ‘there is no limit’.
DI is an international, team-based creative problem-solving program that has been shaping me since the third grade. DI is the brainchild of adults who wished to stimulate ingenuity and divergent thinking through a coupling of structural, theatrical, and technical oriented long-term challenges with an element of spontaneity. DI is different because value doesn’t come from heavy plated trophies or other flashy (if I may add, sometimes grotesque) manifestations of tangible success. Instead, DI is about finding yourself, pushing limits, building dreams, and sometimes laughing after a flamboyant, enthusiastic plummet to failure.
In the course of ten years, DI has embedded itself in my family identity. Wherever we go, we start up a program and get the school involved. To my continuous horror, my dad (who calls himself Yoda) coaches the team. But all he does is “sit around and drink tea” in his own words, letting us find new solutions to outlandish problems. He takes the “Declaration of Independence” seriously (that’s DI talk for the strict coach hands-off policy), letting our own ambitions dictate our success and failure.
In the colorful Meng basement painstakingly adorned in wild ceiling tiles reflecting the artistic abilities of past members, our team of seven brainstorms together under the constraints of the given long-term problem, throwing out crazy ideas such as motorizing the judges to give them a panoramic view of our set. We plan together, sketching out the complex circuit systems involved in establishing a motion sensor-sound relationship necessary to satisfy the mechanical component of our long-term problem, while simultaneously relishing in our shopping trips with a meager, mandatory $100 budget. We create together, painting gigantic headless Marie Antoinettes, French poodles, evil pickles, and Las Vegas casinos as part of our ‘creative skit’. We also worry together, collectively biting our nails before we enter the spontaneous competition where we know nothing and are expected to do anything…in less than 10 minutes.
The best thing about DI is that unlike my other activities from debate to ice hockey, winning can never mean as much as the process. Perhaps DI is the only activity in which a whole year of building, creating, designing, composing – weekly hours amassing to twenty or more – boils down to eight critical, unpredictable minutes on the stage. I’ve stuck with DI for ten years, enjoying it equally when we win awards as when we don’t. Although DI may be one of the activities in which I may be the least successful in, somehow it means so much more than anything else.
