2014 was not my best year for MUN. First, I went to UCBMUN 2014. While turning twenty years old during a MUN conference was amazingly fun, I was heavily expected to gavel (or at least win outstanding) but only pulled off a verbal commendation. While the award was welcomed, I honestly thought I could have done far better.

Afterwards, I chaired my first LAMUN. While the experience was fun and formative for my leadership skills, Jeremy (my crisis director and partner in this endeavor) and I had to deal with staffers who: 1) quit during the training process because they underestimated the amount of work that it entailed, 2) did not understand the training process and skipped out on mandatory meetings, 3) were added onto staff last-minute because of #1 above. It was stressful to deal with all of these circumstances, although Jeremy and I handled it well. While both of us pulled off excellent performances, our staffers were criticized by delegates for lacking professionalism at times, which reflected negatively on us. (Postscript: Jeremy is now Secretary General of LAMUN 2016, and I am so proud of him.)

The selection process for executive board that year was utterly chaotic; several new or otherwise un-prominent club members who lacked experience and dedication to the club were selected for important positions on board, confusing everyone. Many people quit from the club or reduced their commitments. I was one of the overlooked club members who had dedicated hundreds of hours traveling and staffing for MUN@UCLA. I won two awards and chaired two conferences; I could not understand how a member who had never won an award for the club nor chaired a conference had been appointed to board over me. I considered quitting the club, but I felt that I loved MUN too much. It would be an impetuous and easy decision, but I did not want to regret quitting the club and removing myself from the visceral fun of debate and distance myself from the family I had made for myself.

That summer, I studied abroad at the University of Cambridge and relearned what it felt like to immerse myself in something other than MUN. It went a long way to heal the bitterness of the executive board selections.

I returned back to MUN@UCLA in the fall, unsure of what my role in the club was going to be and whether this was going to be my final year for the club. I decided not to travel for the team in the fall, partially because of academic commitments and partially because I wanted the executive board to feel my absence. BruinMUN 2014 was undeniably my worst, which was saying something considering my microphone failed to work all weekend in a lecture hall with over a hundred delegates the previous year. One of my staffers did not attend trainings or staff meetings regularly, despite my email reminders. The other staffer dropped out last-minute with an illness. Hence, I found myself devoid of support as I tried to chair an advanced regional cabinet committee. Thankfully, a number of good friends in the club were quite supportive and didn't blame me for a number of minor slip-ups at the beginning of Saturday morning. Personally, I consider myself responsible for any subpar performance I pulled off that weekend; I was able to chair a collegiate committee by myself and theoretically this should have been no different. However, I do take this experience as a lesson in being more firm with staffers and holding myself to a high professional standard.

It was at this juncture that I thought that my MUN career was over, as I thought any prospects for advancement had just ended. Of course, 2015 decided to prove me wrong.

At UCBMUN 2015, I found myself placed in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) committee, which simulated the upcoming 2015 summit in Caracas. Now, as any student of international relations will tell you, NAM was primarily a product of the Cold War due to the United States and the Soviet Union's propensities to use foreign aid to purchase allies in newly formed nations. With the end of the Cold War, NAM lost much of its geopolitical importance and became even more of a talking heads forum than ever before. Needless to say, it was not a first-choice committee. I did the relevant research for playing a United Arab Emirates (UAE) delegate talking about disaster management and debt relief and self-determination movements and wrote the requisite position papers, but it felt perfunctory due to my recently-lifted self-imposed ban from MUN@UCLA travel team and my antipathy towards the travel team director and her lack of passion for MUN or for serving the travel team beyond the minimal expectations.

One week before the conference, the secretary general of the conference emailed the travel team director saying that there were several important positions left open for the committee, and would it interest UCLA to switch positions at the last minute so they could be filled? I was immediately excited by the prospect, and switched my country from the UAE to Myanmar (also known as Burma); I spent hours researching my new positions and wrote another set of position papers from Myanmar's perspective. I was excited to play a crucial part in this committee and potentially win a high-ranking award. This went sideways, however, when I found out that there had been a major snafu with the assignments. Since the secretary general's email had been sent to several schools simultaneously, another school had taken Myanmar and I would need to take the UAE again, last minute. I was extremely displeased, to say the least. The displeasure did not last: one weekend full of frustration, irritation, and elation later, I had my first collegiate gavel. I could not stop smiling.

This year's LAMUN was beset with arguments between the secretary general, Patrick, and I over the nature of my committee this year. Technically, it was a specialized body and therefore not a crisis committee; I wanted more crisis elements because I knew they would be important for the committee to function as I had imagined and be well-received by delegates. Patrick and I argued back and forth regarding the nature of the crisis updates, how many to have, and we frustrated each other to the extreme at some junctures. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that we would limit the crisis elements at the beginning of the committee and play it from ear from there. The delegates, as I anticipated, wanted more crisis elements as a committee reenacting the student protests in Tiananmen Square would not typically draw many novice delegates. I leave that to the General Assembly. Thankfully, my dais team was a true dream team. Although I had a staffer drop out four weeks before the conference started, she was replaced by an excellent staffer, Alex, who meshed well with the other members and was a real asset during the conference. (Postscript, again: Alex recently won Best Delegate and an automatic place in the fall 2015 travel team in the Spring Mock Conference hosted this past weekend. I am so proud of him.)

According to the Secretariat members, who all take feedback from head delegates and advisors per their job, I had not received any bad feedback all weekend long. Normally, there are comments about how the committee is going quite well, but could be better if the chair/crisis director can fix x, y, or z. However, the feedback for my committee was surprisingly all positive. In fact, one of Jeremy's main platforms for LAMUN Secretary-General was the expansion of hybrid committees like mine for next year due to the reviews my committee garnered. Likewise, I plan to pilot another innovative committee for LAMUN 2016, per my tradition of manipulating rules of procedure to design committees no delegate has really experienced before. I could chair another specialized-crisis hybrid, but where's the fun in doing something you've done before?

I thought my 2015 was going to be a continuation of 2014, because it's easier to expect continuity instead of change if you're doing the same things as before. However, I'm reminded that people change subtly over time, and that I matured and increased my skills in ways I hadn't immediately noticed before. I can easily say that 2015 is my best year of MUN yet. Unfortunately, I can't continue it at BruinMUN 2015 due to the fact that I'll be in Washington DC to intern and study with UCLA's Center for American Politics and Public Policy (CAPPP) program. I will be back for 2016 though, and I am determined to make it even better than before.