you know how they say you can never really forget your firsts?
well, obviously, that's true.
the post-boards phase is a completely transformative one. you suddenly start giving yourself opportunities to learn, opportunities to be, opportunities to figure out who you are.
and somewhere in the middle of all that, i heard about some weird conference at a local university.
the hype around it was captivating, to say the least.
i ignored it as much as i possibly could.
i already knew my parents would never let me attend any conferences. not like they ever had.
but shoutout to pratyancha, my bbg, and one of my closest friends at the time, who told me about it.
we'd spoken a few times about the ongoing genocide, in the gulf. we had very different opinions, and when we got the chance to debate them officially, obviously we weren't going to let that opportunity PASS.
let me tell you, this girl, even with literally my nemesis portfolio, stayed on call with me for hours at a time.
she explained everything.
what to expect when i walked into the committee room. what socials were. what happened during prize distribution. probably everything except how to magically become good at MUNs overnight.
and at that point, i knew i had to go all in.
so i started researching.
and when i say researching, i mean i had absolutely no idea how to research.
my stance was completely moral-based. i didn't understand policy, foreign relations, diplomacy, international law, or any of the other words that suddenly seemed to be flying around.
it was purely, 'how could one possibly be against the genocide of my country?''
the MUN taught me exactly how complicated that question could become.
i had less than a week to prepare, and clearly, i didn't know what i was doing.
frankly, i still don't know how to research properly.
i was searching up UN resolutions, websites whose names i didn't know how to spell, and, at one point, genuinely typing questions like"what does condemn mean?"
to understand what was actually happening, i texted someone from my portfolio country. she explained the situation to me and told me about relatives of hers who were still stuck there. on field research, somewhat?
i also made a completely separate Instagram account just to understand the other side of the story.
i trained myself so that no matter how obnoxious the comments about my portfolio got, i would at least know how to deal with them.
i think it's pretty obvious that i didn't trust news channels either. in fact, i literally spoke to the organizers because the background guide did not include a news channel covering news from my country.
i still wonder how they dealt with me that patiently.
by then, i'd barely figured out the vocabulary. i was still trying to understand the difference between a Point of order and a Point of parliamentary inquiry. i couldn't figure out shit.
and then came the night before the MUN.
i was consistently bombarded, literally BOMBARDED, with questions about my religion, my beliefs, my faith.
i had never consented to any of that being up for debate.
so why was i even letting it happen?
c'mon. i was just a 15-year-old trying to push through.
why did it feel like i was drowning?
instead of focusing on research, procedure, rules, points and speeches, i was spending my time explaining why i had chosen my religion to people who were, in some cases, more than half a decade older than me.
i felt genuinely terrorized.
and although i tried my absolute best to act tough, i didn't want to go anymore.
i was tired of constantly feeling like i had to prove my choice.
i seriously considered carrying a small Quran with me, just in case that stuff came up again.
but obviously, i was not going to back off.
then came the next crisis:
what do i wear?
i could have worn jeans, like most first timers do. instead, some inexplicable itch in me decided it would be a great idea to have my dad's formal pants altered. no, its not my wisest decision.
i wore a keffiyeh too, which, while it definitely made me stand out, also managed to offend a few people. the second day, i wore an abaya. some people were surely threatened. i also received an unofficial best dressed in the committee, so i'll take the win where i can.
and then there was kavya, another one of my closest friends, who took the effort to drop me and pick me up for three days straight. and also helped me network. bbg, this genuinely wouldn't have been possible without you.
now, with my half-headed research and ai generated speech, i knew people would be 10 steps ahead, wrt the war, current affairs, global diplomacy, foreign policy, all of it.
i thought i had enough information because, well, i knew what was happening.
turns out, knowing what was happening and knowing how to present it were two very different things. none of my confidence survived the moment countries like Russia, India and the USA started speaking.
they were clearly seasoned. but, perhaps, not as terrifying as i'd imagined.
i'd been warned specifically about Russia because his vocabulary was apparently crazy. it was.
but considering his portfolio, he was kind enough not to tear my stance to shreds any further.
the days went by. i barely remember most of them. but what i do remember is the MOE, or Motion of Entertainment. there was a couple dance by USA and Russia? a dance on Haye Garmi by Iran? weird stuff.
but one thing that definitely made it memorable was the fact that we failed the committee on purpose.
atp, i didn't even know i couldn't be a signatory.
and everyone was already planning to mess stuff up? let me breathe.
pROUD FAILED COMMITTEE, YOUR FAILURE HAS SURELY MADE ME PROUD. because at least, I could call myself a part of something.
by the end of the conference, i hadn't realised how many times i'd spoken against my own foreign policy, how many dots hadn't been connected, how hollow my research actually was, or how much more thorough, and more importantly, reliable, my research needed to be.
obviously, i didn't win anything.
but my story doesn't end there.
the unofficial MUN group, with their heinous stickers, nearly incriminating videos and lame ass jokes, was what actually felt good. although the conference itself didn't exactly end on the highest note, those midnight stupid conversations did.
for a while, at least.
it's been more than two years now. i still have good connections with some of the people i met back then. some, not so good.
and honestly, that's life.
at the end of the day, i'm just glad i was pushed into that circle of growth, and everything that followed.
story time apart, i'm satisfied that i went there to learn.
i hadn't gone to win.
i'd gone to learn.
and i did.
i learnt that knowing something isn't the same as knowing how to articulate it. that having an opinion isn't the same as understanding the process behind it. that confidence doesn't always mean knowing what you're doing. sometimes, it just means being willing to look stupid while you figure it out.
and, well, that's what MUNs gave me before they gave me anything else.
a circle. because simply being in the circle changes the way people look at you.
more importantly, it changes the way you look at yourself.
you meet people who know things you don't. you speak about things you barely understand. you embarrass yourself. you learn. you come back. you do it again.
and somewhere along the way, you become a little more established.
not because you won a trophy. not because you suddenly became the smartest person in the room.
but because you showed up.
and for a 15-year-old who was still asking Google what "condemn" meant, i think that was a pretty good place to start.