I have attended seven Model United Nations (MUN) conferences; I have chaired two of those and won awards as a delegate in four. However, out of those conferences, there was only one I have gone to another city to attend, and that is BCISMUN II, the one I have attended most recently and the one that plays a significant role in my heart.
MUN used to be one of my fears that I loved. Why? Because I have a stutter, and MUN is heavily based on public speaking, diplomatic communication, and debate, which used to be one of my worst nightmares in the first conferences I went to.
I still remember so vividly at my second conference, because I was still new to the THIMUN procedure and was surrounded by extremely competitive delegates, I performed poorly and stumbled over most of my words in almost every single speech I have made. A delegate at the conference even personally attacked me, which did not even result in her getting a strike. However, that conference taught me a valuable lesson, which is to always speak up for yourself and never give up on trying to get your voice heard.
The next few conferences were much better; I at least got the technique of how to craft good and impactful speeches, and how to be outstanding in a conference. I was in seventh grade when the first BCISMUN was hosted, and I did what previous conferences taught me: Be active, speak a lot, and try to lead the debate with what I can do. However, the quality of my speeches and the professionalism of the amendments I made were not as good yet, which made me only get an honorable mention and not Outstanding or Best Delegate. I also learned the lesson of not rushing the process as being a chair requires an abundance of experience in being a delegate, and it always takes time to accumulate experience. However, I never forgot my ultimate goal for MUN, which was to chair at conferences and to lead the committee, and I have always applied to be chair at conferences, but not all of my applications were passed, until the last conference I participated in 2024, which was the World Youth MUN hosted by BWYA, which was the first time I chaired for a committee. It was a great experience as my confidence of being a chair in a conference outweighs my confidence in being a delegate in a conference.
Due to my chairing addiction, I thought that it was perhaps time for me to chair again in 2025. However, because I had just moved to a new school in a new city, I did not know what conferences were for me, and that gave me the first impression of Guangdong being a MUN desert (but after some research I realized that the annual Yale MUN China and Harvard MUN China are both in Guangdong, so perhaps it is not a desert). But I still feel so attached to my Beijinger identity, as you can probably tell from my love of food in Beijing, so why not take this opportunity of going to a conference as a chance to go back to Beijing? I then applied for a position to chair this year’s BCISMUN, which I thankfully got. After a long persuasion process, my parents finally agreed to let me go, and the day of the conference soon arrived. Before I knew it, the two-day conference was over, but now, looking back, even though I had trouble catching up with school work the week after, I still enjoyed the entire process, and I simply loved being back in Beijing after missing the city for so long. Even though I still had so many places that I wanted to go to in the city, the fun of the conference, meeting the friends I made back in Beijing, and gaining more experience in the world of MUN made the trip back more than worthwhile.
Images: Margaret Yang
