By Dan Fish
“What is Odyssey of the Mind” you ask? What’s basically involved in being on an O.M. Team? Well let me tell you.
Once you’ve picked the project you’re going to work on from a list of about 6-8 problems, you then proceed with completing it by using a combination of thought/imagination and by following the rules and regulations. It also is not a bad idea to practice short term speed round problems. Your goal is to complete your problem before the pre-competition to test it out, and then go on to the real competition.
You will compete in your own problems category at regionals with your surrounding cities schools. Next at Nationals the winners from region tournaments all over the U.S. compete against one another, and if you’re lucky enough you’ll make it all the way to world competition. There never is a lack of people competing and there are always large crowds.
This is basically (though not this simple and/or fast) the format for O.M. This is what Mini-School decided to be a part of this year. Although this creative problem game, if you will, was presented to Mini-School in 1988, it was still fairly new to Mini-School because in 1988 it didn’t get much farther than just plain discussing it. Our team this year made up of our coach/teacher Lester and our team members Chris O’Dell, Kurt Loewen, Stacy Caton, Tammy Duncan, Patti Weist and myself weren’t just talking about it, we actually were involved in every aspect of it and planned to go all the way with it. The purpose of the project itself was threefold: to gain credit for graduation and, most importantly, to learn and have fun at the same time.
What was usually offered as an extra-curricular activity, Mini-School was lucky enough to offer as a class for credit, so the advantages of having O.M. as a class were not only to get credit for what we were doing but also to get a chance to meet as a team a whole lot more than most teams would have a chance to.
The most important reason for the existence of O.M. probably is to learn and learning we did. We all learned how to stretch our imagination and some of us actually found out that we had an imagination. We learned, as good tools for life, teamwork and how to deal with people you’re given in any situation no matter if they’re your favorite people or not. We learned that everybody has an idea or an opinion and that the ideas or opinions of everyone were always good. We learned how good we were with our hands, given the situation.
Along with learning and doing work we found out how much fun O.M. was and once you get to competition, the fun really is all captured in your project. At even the bad times in working on the project we would still never lose that element of fun.
Fun to me in O.M. is thinking and imagining, then making what you thought up and imagined and then dressing up on competition day and taking a look at what you accomplished from what you were given on paper.
Last but not least, fun in O.M. to me is performing in front of an audience, a skit you’ve created with the finished project involved.
Although we did not complete the designated project, we did meet the challenge by learning what we learned by having a good time, and by leaving with the thought that each one of us, if given the chance, would be a part of O.M. again.