Hello Upper East Siders, this is your one and only source into the adventurous lives of NMUN’s elite.
When you’re reading this, I’ve attended the NMUN conference in New York City. Let me tell you one thing: it was intense. For four whole days in a row, we had to negotiate, speech, lobby, write and revise working papers and vote on the draft resolutions. It’s almost everything the real United Nations does as well.
In my first entry, I mentioned that I was in the General Assembly Third Committee. We had about 150 Member States present during this session, which equals to 300 people. I speeched during the agenda setting on Sunday and on Tuesday. My partner also speeched, about ‘Improving Coordination in Humanitarian Response to Natural Disasters’. Quite a topic right? There was so much to negotiate about, and so many ways to implement solutions. Speeching for 300 people is not as hard as I thought it was, but at the same time it was nerve wrecking and exciting. Do I regret it? I most certainly don’t. It was a once in a lifetime experience.
At first, it was all technical and complicated. But somehow I was able to manage, and I learned from it. One of the best parts of these days, was that I met many people of many universities and countries. I made great new friends, because all NMUN delegates are very open to meet new people and get to know you. One particular moment was when I was smoking a cigarette outside (yes, I know, still not cool) and two girls asked me for a lighter. We then got to talking about this and that.
I have to be honest as well. The Tuesday they call Meltdown Tuesday. The funny thing about this is that I heard it was called like this after I had my meltdown. Right before the lunch break I was so tired and four people at the same time were talking to me and I just could not deal with it at that moment. As soon as the session was suspended and the break started, I rushed outside and went to Central Park to get away from all the stimuli and the people. I just sat on a bench in the sun for 45 minutes, complained to a friend about life itself. And then I was all good again. I went back with new energy and took on the whole afternoon.
Wednesday was the day we had to hand in the working papers, pray and hope that it would be accepted as a draft resolution and then we had to vote upon all draft resolutions. My baby was draft resolution 1/4 and thank god most Member States voted in favor of it, which meant it became Resolution 1/4. It’s satisfying to see all your hard work rewarded. I thought this was the biggest reward I could have, seeing my working paper become a resolution.
But I was wrong, there were even bigger honours. On Wednesday afternoon, at the end of the conference, they announced the awards. And all the hard work of the eight months of training and the five days of conference were rewarded with several prizes. My partner and I won the Outstanding Delegate award and Outstanding Position Paper award. Another duo in our delegation won the exact same awards, and two other duo’s won Outstanding Position Paper award. But this wasn’t all yet.
During the evening, the results of the most important award were published, and it turned out our delegation won the Outstanding Delegation award as well. In total, we won seven awards. I could not believe my ears. Our delegation won the highest number of awards an Erasmus University team has ever won. It was so surreal and I still can’t really get my head around it. I am so grateful, especially to our trainers Linda de Bont and Bas Metz, and our board supervisors Lisa Versloot and Floris Geijer. Without them, we would never have received so many awards.
With the end of the conference, my blog for Erasmus Magazine almost comes to an end as well. After this entry, I will update you once more about life after NMUN. I’m a bit scared and sad to no longer have NMUN in my life (drama queen much?) but I’ll see how it goes. Until next time, my lovely readers.
