So you’re new to A levels and you’re in a completely different environment. New people, new places, new experiences, and you feel as if you want to change things up a bit in your life. It’s understandable really, if you’re tired and bored and quite literally just trudging through every day like a zombie, of course you’d want to add a little spice in your life. Now if you’re like me, reader, then at some point along your tedious and unchanging internal monologue running its’ course, you decide to join,

the public speaking society!

Bad idea. Trust me. (I’m joking don’t hurt me)

Now you might be wondering why joining a seemingly harmless and incredibly enjoyable society would be a bad idea, but like hear me out. Let’s talk about why you should stay 10 million feet away from MUNs.

School Politics:

If you’re a gullible first time MUNner like all of us poor souls have been at some point in our dreary and frankly uninteresting lives have been, then you would be under the impression that MUNs are inherently unbiased, unquestionably fair. (haha they’re really not) So like basically, if you’re from certain schools, we are not giving out names, but anyway, if you’re from certain schools then it’s guaranteed that you would get 3 things:

• the good country™ (everyone says country doesn’t have a say in your award, but lol @ them it does).
• recognition in committee since chances are you’ll probably know most of the Chairs, or as I like to call them, the dictators who have far too much free time on their hands and are so done with their lives they decide to spend their weekends judging a few kids while they debate.
• the Best Delegate award. Yes this happens, yes MUNs are evil and unfair, yes if you’re from a certain school in gulberg they’ll give you the BD it happens wake up!!!

Research:

Have you ever met that one delegate at every conference who comes up to you and goes like ‘haha I have no research man I’m just here to chill’ and then goes home with the BD? Guess what, they researched. It’s an established fact that if you want to be able to speak good, you need to actually do your homework on whatever boring topic areas your chair laid out for you. Now this equals sleepless nights, 20+ tabs open on your laptop that you know you will never actually read but keep open anyway, hoping they’ll guilt you into reading an article or two, and high levels of anxiety the night before the conference when you’ve written nothing, read nothing, prepared nothing and are essentially poised to fall headlong into the inferno that is known as the MUN. Completely unprepared. Fun right?

KeWL chAirS:

‘Are there any motions on the floor?’ ‘Point of parliamentary inquiry.’ ‘I asked for motions delegate, not points’ ok, first of all that’s a typical mean girl move, chair sahab. If you’re a first timer, chairs like that will make you wet your pants and regret your decision to ever try MUNs in the first place. But fear not, there are nice chairs out there as well (except not really but you get used to it promise)

Entertainment Sessions:

Okay yes fine, they’re supposed to be fun and entertaining except they’re really not, and they always suck. They’re terrible no one likes them except the dais because they get to look ‘cool’ and recognize their friends and hear nice things (read: lies) about them being the best dais members ever. But really, they suck, they’re boring and too many boys get slapped.

So anyway, if after reading all this you still want to join the Public Speaking Society, then you do you man, just don’t say I didn’t warn you. But on the bright side, at least you’ll get to speak here unlike some societies that thought merging teams was a good idea.

Fatima Farooq Chishti
Class of 2020