7- In a journal entry, recall a time when you were new to an activity but you were not entirely sure of its rules or processes. How did you feel, and how did you try to learn that activity and fit in with those who did it often?

My Experience with Contig

I can still remember the first time I ever play Contig. It was during my third grade. My math teacher told us that we were going to play a math game call Contig and there will be an upcoming Contig tournament in school and the champion team will go on and face team from other school in a county tournament. The teacher spends about 20 minutes explaining the rule of Contig. But I couldn’t understand most words she was saying, since back then my English was that great. I was so terrible at my first Contig game that my opponent gave me a 10 point handicap at the start and I still lost the game by 15 points in the end. I felt like a complete loser at the end of the game, but I would not give up on the game.

To the people who don’t know what Contig is? It a math game, it consists of two team playing against each other. The team is made up of 1 to 3 players. At the before the game start, the teacher will pass out a Contig board. On the board, there is a table 12 x 12, each of the box have a number inside that goes from 1 to 144. The teacher randomly mark x on 10 of the boxes. Then the team will play rock, paper, and scissor to decide who will go first. As the game started, the teacher will roll three special dice, and he will yell the numbers the dices had rolled. The team will use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with the numbers to come up with a number and mark the box with that same in the box within the table. The team scores if the box the team marked is next to or diagonal to an already marked box. The amount of point that team earn depend on how many marked box is next to the box the team marked.

I spend a lot of time to learn all the rules to it. I watch how other player play the game, and try to the rules and some strategy along the. After a week or two, I finally learned all the basic rules of the game. Soon I won my very first game, but I won’t stop there. I overcome every opponent and challenges along the way. Even though I won the school Contig that year, and lost in the county tournament. What I enjoy the most about Contig was how much fun that game was not the win or lost.