Guest Article by Emerah Adell
Bio: Hello! I’m Emerah, I’ve been doing MUN for 2 years now and have become completely and irrevocably obsessed with it! I have represented Croatia, South Korea and Italy for Rocky River High School’s MUN team and adore debate, dance and learning new languages!
It seems like my first Model UN conference was so long ago, even though it was less than a year. To be honest, that first conference was the beginning of a somewhat all consuming addiction to the world of resolutions, diplomacy and parliamentary procedure. My partner and I joined our school’s MUN team our freshman year of high school. We had absolutely no idea what we had gotten ourselves into.
During my first conference, My partner and I didn’t know anything. Like, at all. Although our team counselor did his best, there’s only so much you can learn without actually being there. MUN is a learn-as-you-go type of sport. That first conference was rough from beginning to end. Starting all the way at roll call. Being Croatia, we were one of the first delegations to be called. It was completely disastrous and we broke one of the first unspoken rules of model UN. When our name was called? We said, “Here.” (Like I said, we had no clue what we were doing!)
After a few opening speeches we decided to try to distinguish ourselves and wing an opening speech. That went about as well as you can imagine, but after stutter stepping our way through the first 20 minutes of the day, things got much smoother. We made it through the first day of debate without making complete fools of ourselves. There was a lot of vocabulary that we didn’t understand, and one super controlling delegation who almost took over the chair, but overall, it went well.
The biggest thing that I remember from that conference though? The delegation representing Russia. Now, I personally have nothing… much against Russia, but these delegates? Man did they rub me the wrong way. My partner and I were fairly serious about everything that was going on, because our goal was to win awards. These delegates were the exact opposite, they made jokes, screwed around and even brought out a deck of cards! I realize in hindsight that we were fairly uptight, but it was still annoying!
The second day rolled around and our resolution was drafted, voted and accepted. Sadly, we weren’t able to get our names on as sponsors, but we were close. After we finished the first topic, the committee began debate on the second one in a very joking manner, with Russia in the lead. We drafted a serious, well thought out working paper. While they proposed that we launch all the nuclear waste, into space.
My partner and i didn’t really understand that it was a joke and it was embarrassing to say the least. We took everything way too seriously and got some weird looks because of it. The committee passed the joke resolution, but the good news was, we got some really helpful practice in on resolution writing. I still stand firm that joke resolutions aren’t that funny. I love FunMUN as much as the next person, but joke resolutions are making fun of serious topics.
FunMUN was a completely unexpected part of the day. We didn’t really even know it existed! Superlatives were great, and playing “BS” with the aforementioned deck of cards was even more fun. We got to know the delegates we had just spent two days working with but also fighting against.
But it all wrapped up with the awards ceremony. My partner and I weren’t expecting anything. We didn’t get sponsorship on the passed resolution, we didn’t do amazing on most of our speeches and we certainly weren’t knowledgeable on parliamentary procedure. You can imagine our surprise when we were called up for Honorable Mention! It was pretty exciting for our first conference! All in all, it was an amazing experience and one that I’m excited to repeat for the rest of high school and college! And it’s definitely NOT an addiction that I should probably get help for!
MUN01 would like to thank Emerah for her contribution. If you would like to be featured as a guest writer, we will be re-opening applications soon. Keep an eye on our website and socials for updates!
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