By Ana Farah 
Often, students hear about others joining clubs just for fun trips and getting out of school and although I think we can all relate to wanting a weekend away from home, our school’s Model United Nations Club is so much more than that. This past November, 15 students from MUN went to the Princeton Model United Nations Conference, accompanied by Mr. Gaeta. Our itinerary included a very long bus ride which we spent talking for hours, door-dashing a bunch of food, playing trivia, and most importantly, attending our conference committees.
For those of you who don’t know, Model UN is quite literally a fake version of the United Nations where you represent a country or a person in a series of committee sessions which can last up to 3 hours, whilst we debate very interesting topics. If you are in a “crisis” committee, the experience is a lot different from the General Assembly, and a lot of students encountered this on our recent trip. On the first night of the committee sessions, I saw my friend Alex Bien who was representing the prince of Transylvania, Francis Rhédey, in his conflict, walking back to his dorm. It was his first time in a crisis committee and it was definitely scary at first; he mentioned how he felt like he was never going to figure it out. Other students in crisis were feeling the same way but after some moral support and advice from our favorite advisor, Mr. Gaeta, they all left with a valuable experience. They actually ended up having a lot of fun in committee for the next few days and grew tremendously as delegates. I want to congratulate all of them on this opportunity!
Personally, one of my favorite parts of this conference was getting to know all of the students from Princeton and chat with them about their experiences and how they achieved their personal goals. It is so valuable to learn from others who have recently gone through what we are going through now: high school. The chairs and everyone who made this event possible are all truly amazing and they completely changed my view of Model UN. We also got to do many fun things, such as send each other candy grams with funny messages and pretend it wasn’t us. Additionally, our last committee session was called Fun-Mun where we played “hot seat” and got to know each other as people, rather than delegations.
This was also my first year going to PMUNC, and I was super excited. It definitely lived up to all my expectations and I am so lucky to have gone with such a wonderful group of students and a great advisor who always knew how to calm us down from stressful committees. I am grateful for York Suburban administrators for helping our clubs and community and for supporting us to accomplish these amazing events. It is truly invaluable to my learning experience.
I would also recommend to any student who is interested to join Model UN to grow your debate, research, communication skills and more. This club has taught me more than I can express, and I am truly so thankful!
We will be back next year. See you later, PMUNC!
Michela Soares