Unsurprisingly, my last year at UCLA and my impending graduation are full of farewells. I am preparing to give up my presidency at Pi Sigma Alpha to the next class. I am on the Senior Selection Committee for Model UN at UCLA, and will be listening to and interviewing the candidates for next year's Senior Secretariat positions. I still have GCIMUN (where I am chairing the Economic Commission for Europe and getting to see the inside of the General Assembly room at the UN building once again) and MUNSI (where my grand farewell to Model UN at UCLA will be). At the beginning of 2016, the end was still a hazy miasma. Now it is all crystallizing: this is how I will be remembered, this will be my legacy.

“Legacy. What is a legacy?
It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone else will sing for me
America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me
You let me make a difference
A place where even orphan immigrants
Can leave their fingerprints and rise up.”

— "The World Was Wide Enough," Lin-Manuel Miranda

I couldn't resist inserting those beautifully written (and sung) Hamilton lyrics into that apt juncture. I love that musical so much. Although I have to say that Lemonade has supplanted it as my study/listen-every-waking-moment music for now. More on legacy and Hamilton in a little while.

As written in my last blog post, several things conflated in a period of one week as to monopolize all my time and to ensure it was focused on work. I am no stranger to being a workaholic and having ten items on my plate at once, but it was the first time I seriously missed writing a blog post in a timely manner.

Nevertheless, I am sitting here in front of my laptop, devoting quality time to writing an overdue post about my last LAMUN. I designed and built my fourth and last committee to be a reenactment of the Roman Senate during the Ides of March, also known as That Time Julius Caesar Got Stabbed Thirty Something Times. It was my love letter to Model United Nations. It was a love letter to the club I love so dearly. It's corny to boldface and italicize those two sentences so baldly, but I find that my soul demands its emphasis. That committee was no-holds-barred crisis updates, history, delegates being inspired to do shady things, a lot of stress, and so much more love and fun.

That entire weekend was an exercise in fun and being with the people I would go the furthest for.

I remember being in high school and knowing that I would miss few people from my graduating class. I remember being lost and directionless when first stepping onto the UCLA campus. Being terrified that I would lose my way around campus, being terrifically on-point with everything in the perpetual fear that I would mess up. I got my direction and my friends through MUN@UCLA. I weathered those fears with those friends, and I let myself shed them as I walked miles around campus and formed close-knit bonds with people in the club.

I remember being stressed and insulted, politicking until I thought I was going to get informally blacklisted for my schmoozing. Everyone else was feeling the pressure to network their way to the top too. I remember the conferences - the exhaustion, the stress, the absolute exhilaration, and the moments of absolute serenity and madness, surrounded by friends.

I remember the aimless hangouts at people's apartments, the complaints about classes, and the pleased joy I felt when my first toast of my twenty-first birthday was with these people. Our club culture is that of a professional meritocracy - if you can work your way into the inner circle, you will find one of the best networks you can imagine, both within UCLA and with other universities as well. But one has to work, persevere, and leverage the club network to get there. Just as I have had many friends who have stuck with the club, time commitments, club culture, politicking and all, I have had even greater numbers of friends opt out of the club. It isn't meant for everyone. (It's good practice for life.)

There was no finer way to exit my last LAMUN - the last MUN@UCLA conference I will ever staff - I am so happy to do it in style.

This club has been my life for the past four years. I can only hope that it goes into good hands. And, of course...

“And when my time is up
Have I done enough?
Will they tell my story?”

— "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story," Lin-Manuel Miranda

Gotcha. What would Alexander Hamilton be without Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton?