By: Leah
Edited by Harith Syafiee
Earlier this month, IIUM hosted a MUN conference in our very own Economics faculty. I, against my better judgement, decided to sign up for it.
Now, initially, I had my reservations. I am a certified overthinker, so naturally, I kept worrying about how well I would do and whether I would even be able to talk to the other delegates. I overthought for days on end about where the venues would be, where registration would be, who I would sit with, and everything else in between. Trust me when I say that my friends had to witness me going from “Oh my god, I’m so excited!” to “Oh my god, what have I done?!” several times in the past month.
But then I just allowed myself to enjoy the conference. And it was quite a lovely experience. Every council session was more chaotic than the last, sometimes edging on chair-throwing (but I’ll leave that to the Dewan Rakyat folk). Yes, I did break foreign policy on several occasions, but hey, it’s my first conference. I found joy in speaking, even if I didn’t speak often. I found my voice in a diplomatic setting where like-minded people were able to come together. As an English major surrounded by social science and law students, I did feel a bit out of place, but then I simply reminded myself that I deserved to be there too.
The chairs were absolute darlings, ensuring that we followed procedure and would stop throughout to give us advice. I do feel like I’ve undoubtedly witnessed the loss of their sanity when they had to repeatedly tell us not to use personal pronouns in a formal council… (There was a wall of shame). I was lucky in this regard to have understanding chairs who took sympathy for us newbie delegates who had never gone to conferences before.
One of my favourite moments at the conference was the crisis council. On the second day, when everyone was essentially losing the plot, my chairs decided to do a crisis council. Imagine a side quest. In the middle of our council, breaking news sweeps the delegates off kilter. In our crisis council, it was announced that there was a traditional blanket shortage due to a world leader stealing them for a Halloween party at Buckingham Palace! Although it was extremely silly, it was definitely the break that we needed to keep going and gather our lost brain cells for a moment while still maintaining decorum.
The best part was meeting so many new people. My council was filled with students ranging from fifteen to early twenties. As such, we were in different stages in our academic lives. But that didn’t stop us from bonding and realising that we had a lot in common. I think it’s somewhat poetic that I came to the opening ceremony without knowing anyone (except for the IIUM humans) and came out of the closing ceremony surrounded by new friends.
So the question remains: would I do this again? Absolutely! Perhaps not in the near future, but in the coming year. This experience taught me how to research properly, diving deep into my country’s politics and foreign policy. It taught me to speak out and think of something bigger than myself. I definitely made the right decision, choosing this to be my first conference since it was in the comfort of my own university. After a year of attending training sessions, it seems only fitting that I finally concluded;
To MUN is the answer.
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