Odyssey of the Mind

When I was in 2nd grade I took part in a program called Odyssey of the Mind and I was involved from then until I graduated (except for the one year I missed because I couldn't find a team). Odyssey of the Mind is a creative competition for groups of 5-8 students from kindergarten through college. Each Odyssey team (run through the school district) is put into a division which is decided by the age of the oldest person on the team. Each team must then choose one of the problems listed on the Odyssey of the Mind website, found here, to work on.

The teams I was on usually worked on the "classics" problem which usually involved some kind of classical work in art, writing, or history. The other types of problems include a vehicle problem where teams must create a vehicle that can complete a certain kind of task, a balsa wood problem where each team builds a balsa structure that must support the most weight while also meeting certain specific requirements about weight and the number of legs, a humorous problem, and a technical problem. The problems for 2010 are located here.

On the day of competition teams must not only compete in their chosen problem, called the long term problem, because teams spend weeks and months working on the solution, but teams must also compete in a spontaneous problem. The spontaneous problem is a much shorter problem that can be one of three types either verbal, hands on, or a combination of the two. A verbal problem would give the teams a chance to exercise their mental skills and quick thinking, one example of a spontaneous problem is use words to make a first and last name that relate to an occupation ex Dan Druff for a hairdresser. A hands on problem focuses on completing a problem as a team, one example is building a pasta tower as high as possible with limited supplies and time. A hands on verbal problem is a combination of a verbal problem and a hands on problem and could be something like use the two objects on the table to create something from another planet and describe what it is used for. The spontaneous problems usually take less than ten minutes to complete and cannot be planned for ahead of time.

Each Odyssey team starts out at the regional competition where they compete with other teams from nearby school districts. The top several teams then move onto the state competition, which for PA, is held in Altoona. The top two teams of each problem in each division then get to go onto the world finals. At each level there are a few awards that teams can win, the Omer, is presented to teams who embody the spirit of Odyssey of the Mind, and the Ranatra Fusca, is the highest award given for creativity. At the regional or state levels if a team receives the Ranatra Fusca they automatically move on to the next competition level.

Odyssey was a great experience for me and really helped me learn about creativity and work on those skills. I would love to continue working on Odyssey but it was difficult to get a committed team in high school and thus far it has been impossible to get together a college team.

Here are some of the pictures from my later years spent on Odyssey teams.

This is my team right after our long term presentation at the state competition in 2004.

This is the "pin board" that my 2004 team made just after our World Final long term presentation at the University of Maryland.

A close up of the back of the pin board with a tree shape in the pins.

This is the front of the pin board with part of a person imprinted on it.