Odyssey of the Mind

[SATX*APhi]

Was anybody else a member of Odyssey of the Mind?

I loved it. I was invited to join when in fourth grade, the first year Odyssey of the Mind was at my school. We didn't compete because we were all fairly new to Odyssey of the Mind and the process. Did anyone compete?

[PsychTau]

Oh my lord...OM!!! Yes, I did it for 2 or 3 years in junior high. I was always on the "Structure" building team...where you have to build a structure out of balsa wood that holds as much weight as possible. I sucked at structure building, but I did everything else. We actually placed 3rd in state on year...just barely missed going to National/International competition.

My most memorable performance (we had to perform a skit along with our structure): An anaconda snake. We had some sort of jungle theme going on, and I was the snake. Costume and everything. Imagine standing straight with your arms extended straight over your head (biceps on your ears). Then slide a tight fabric tube over you painted like a snake. That was my costume. I sat on the floor with my hands extended over my head like that pretending to be a snake. It was a royal pain in the ass.

PsychTau

[swissmiss04]

Oh yes! OM was the bomb. I wrote the skits for both years I was in it. We nearly made it to "World" competition. I was Hillary Clinton in my 5th grade sketch. Gawd that was priceless.

[stagebear]

i loved OM! i was in it for three years (5-7th grades). my 6th grade team went on to worlds at college park, maryland with our old man and the sea skit. it was so much fun cause i was there with 4 of my best friends.

yay for OM!

[JaimeNicole]

Originally posted by PsychTau
Oh my lord...OM!!! Yes, I did it for 2 or 3 years in junior high. I was always on the "Structure" building team...where you have to build a structure out of balsa wood that holds as much weight as possible. I sucked at structure building, but I did everything else. We actually placed 3rd in state on year...just barely missed going to National/International competition.

My most memorable performance (we had to perform a skit along with our structure): An anaconda snake. We had some sort of jungle theme going on, and I was the snake. Costume and everything. Imagine standing straight with your arms extended straight over your head (biceps on your ears). Then slide a tight fabric tube over you painted like a snake. That was my costume. I sat on the floor with my hands extended over my head like that pretending to be a snake. It was a royal pain in the ass.

PsychTau

OMG.....i did the same thing....except i was the only girl on my team so the boys got to pick what we did and they wanted to do a godzilla thing where like, they were trying to crush buildings....yeah, its sounds really dumb now (im realizing as im typing) but im sure it was way cool when we were in 6th grade.....

pretty much the only thing i learned from OM was that playing with super glue is fun, but it REALLY hurts to get your fingers unstuck.... (i was, and still am VERY easily entertained )

[AshleyPi]

This really brings me back. I was in OM for five years and made my mom coach the team for two of those years. Aw..... we were such dorks!

[Measi]

I remember this!! I did it for two years-- 5th and 6th grade.

All I can remember is a new product theme, and we somehow came up with Canned Air as a sports drink.

*snicker*

[Nikki_DZ]

I was in OM from 2nd grade until 10th grade. My family calls those my "paper mache" years, as at least once a year I came home covered head to toe in flour, water, and newspaper strips .

Except for the first year (we were a primary team) and once in junior high, I always did the "Classics". It really helped when studying mythology and such in college!

Anyone else win a Ranta Fuscha (sp?) award?

[FSUZeta]

i have been an om coach for the past three years for my son's middle school team. we went to worlds last year and placed third this year at state competition. last year we won a renatra fuska at state, in addition to placing first in our problem catagory(classics). this year we won an omer at states(that makes our 2nd). my team is all 8th graders and plan to compete at the h.s. level next year. and they are not dorks-they are the cool kids.
they are an awesome group of kids and so tight-knit. i am one lucky woman!! (but boy, am i tired!!)

[Kevin]

Yup. Did some kind of drama thing.

We got DQ'd (although we were way better than anyone else) because someone's parent stepped over some tape line that parents were supposed to stay behind.

Complete BS..

I'm not bitter or anything though

[erniegurl00]

Ugh OM brings back bad memories. The year I did it we didn't have a good supervisor, and we were on our own. Our skit fell apart and we were fined extra because our costumes were reported correctly. I remember our skit involved Egypt or something. I was dressed like a mummy, meaning my friends wrapped toliet paper all around and put a mask on me. However, the mask didn't fit me right. On performance day the TP was falling off, and because I couldn't see out of the mask I tripped on the TP and fell off stage. Yeah, we didn't do well that year.

Personally I was always an Academic Superbowl and Spellbowl chick.

[ASTalumna06]

I was going to create a new thread, but... I'm so happy to see that one is already here!

I did OM from 2nd grade through 8th grade. I LOVED it.

My first year, I was in the primary competition. Our theme to work with was "Scientific Clowns". We had set up a classroom and the teacher was "the sun". I was the earth and I randomly stood up in the middle of class and started walking in circles around her. She asked, "What on earth are you doing?! (we were all creative like that). I replied, "It takes the earth 365 days to rotate around the sun." We also had clowns who represented magnets and would stick together, then fly apart throughout the performance. Entertaining.

After that, we always did the balsa wood structure problem. One of my team members, Jack, his dad was in construction and he taught us how to build structures like nobody's business. We had jigs, and widgets, and the superest of super glue. The most we ever held was 1000lbs with an 18 gram structure. I will never forget sanding and blow-drying the structure to get every last bit of weight off before the weigh-in at competition.

We actually made it to the World Competition in 1995 and 1996 at the University of Tennessee and the University of Iowa. In '95, the problem was called "A New Twist" and we had to twist the structure after every 50lbs (I think?) that was put onto it. We actually couldn't talk during our skit, which seemed to be a theme for the structure problem for at least a few years. Our performance was about two news reporters who kept seeing breaking news occur outside the window, and the structure represented the printing press that had to be stopped in order to report the breaking news.

The next year, the problem was called "Crunch"... and we could actually talk in that one! After every 50lbs that went on the structure, two billiard balls had to be released on ramps to hit the sides of the structure. Our performance was all about Jim Perdue and his egg-cellent egg dome factory. The two girls who released the billiard balls were dressed as chickens. It was hot. haha. We actually came in 9th that year... And we would have come in 8th if we had put the word "School" after "New Searles Elementary" on our membership sign, and not lost 2 points. Those judges were harsh!

And if anyone out there made it to the world competition, do you still have your pin towel??

[alum]

I judged OM short problems at the local level for about 5 years. My son was on OM teams during this time period. His school had to supply a judge for each team it sent so I volunteered. Of course I judged a different age division than the one for his team.

[Smile_Awhile]

I OMed during 3rd grade, and then 5th-7th grade. I never made it to World (one team from my school did, multiple years), but I made it to State two out of four years. Regionals in my state were tough!

I don't really remember much about my 3rd grade year, other than I sang and danced and we talked about some hyperdrive thing... I don't really know. But in 6th grade, we had an Elvis theme (it was the Classics involving the Oddessy). I was Elvis. I had an alsom wig made out of yarn and poster board. We did pretty awful...

My best year was something about tricking people into believing that they were hearing words of wisdom from a dumb comment. We built a HUGE fortune cookie out of felt and chicken wire. We had a Chinese restaurant, and used two girls who looked almost identical as the same character.

Those years taught me one thing: ANYTHING can be done on the cheap, and with duct tape!

[FSUZeta]

just when i was enjoying my retirement from OofM, my son and 1 of his friends during their junior year decided to do OM one more time-they had always wondered if 2 people could make it to worlds and they did! having 2 people as a team was a definate disadvantage in the spontaneous portion of the competition, but they were awarded a renatra fusca at state and headed off to michigan state for worlds.

they threw their skit together the week before regionals, added a song that they wrote driving up to orlando for states (their long term judges gave them a standing ovation when they were done) & gave me more grey hair than i wanted with their laid back attitude(we've done this before, we know what we are doing). had they not had years of prior OofM experience, and been the creative fellows that they are, they could not have pulled it off.

they were pirates, and they used a recurring theme of umbrellas. it was the sail on their pirate ship, turned inside out it, with a ball of aluminum foil on the tip of the handle it was the North Pole, and it represented their made-up place, which was an island of the coast of mexico. they even had a cocktail umbrella taped on a coconut to represent a tropical drink on the island. they were hilarious and all over campus, other OM'ers were calling out to them -"hey, pirate dudes. great skit", "hey pirate dudes, you were awesome." come to think of it. "dudes" was a recurring theme at worlds, too. many people said that they were funny enough to be on tv-and they were!

my husband and i both judged at the regional level last year-i loved it. we were invited to judged at state but had a conflict. maybe next year.