My SIMUN Experience

Counting down the days to SIMUN, I was more nervous than I ever had been. I had no idea what to expect. I was afraid I’d say something wrong, something that nobody agreed with; I was afraid I’d be on my own. I thought it was going to be horrible, but I was very wrong.

To prepare for SIMUN, I researched the three topics that were going to be discussed in our group. As the country of Slovakia, I didn’t think that I’d be very involved, but I researched a lot anyways. I also researched the history of my country, which helped me know what my country had done in the past in situations such as war and international conflict. I knew my topics as well as I could, but still felt unprepared. Even though those topics were what we were going to talk about, I was expecting something crazy to happen and I’d not have a clue what to do. After about two weeks of preparation, it was time for the simulation.

On the first day of SIMUN, I walked in scared. There weren’t too many freshmen in our group, and I knew that all of the upper classmen were prepared because they’d done this the years before. I took my seat and we started. For the first scenario, I didn’t participate much. One of the mentors told me I needed to start talking more and I did. Before I knew it, in the scenarios to come, I was making speeches, asking questions to the speakers, and caucusing with other countries. I was really confident and was starting to know what I was doing. Before SIMUN started, I didn’t think I’d have anything to do because I didn’t think my country would be involved, but I was wrong. My country came up in a newsflash – citizens of mine had been killed on a private ship, and I had to do something about it. I made a speech and myself and a few other countries wrote a resolution that got passed and everything was solved. That was probably the most exciting scenario for me because I participated in it the most.

I’m really excited to do SIMUN again next year, but there are some things I’d do differently to prepare and participate. First, I’ll research my country more. I knew the basic history, but I feel like I need to know more than I did to be able to make better decisions in a scenario. Second, I’ll participate as soon as I can. I wish I would’ve done more in the first scenario, but I was too nervous.

Overall, SIMUN was so much fun. I’m considering MAMUN for next year because I think it’ll be even more fun than SIMUN. It was an amazing experience and I look forward to it for next year.