I raised my placard into the air, unsure about what I was going to say if the chair of the Social Affairs Council called on me. Despite the practice I had in the Model Arab League club, there was no way to simulate the feeling of sitting on my council during the actual conference. Joining MAL was far outside of my comfort zone. First, there is the Arab League aspect. I am not a Middle Eastern politics expert by any means, so there was a huge learning curve when it came time to memorize leaders, political parties, and religious affiliations. The hardest aspects of this were working within realistic alliances during the unmoderated caucuses as well as being appropriately deferential in the moderated caucuses (OSU was the delegation from Yemen, so this involved a lot of “deferring to the honorable opinion of Saudi Arabia.”)
Additionally, before joining Model Arab League and going to this conference at Miami University, I had never had public speaking experience. In fact, public speaking was something I avoided at all costs. Before attending the conference, I doubted my ability to speak up in my council. And once I was there in the room, surrounded by seasoned upperclassmen who used MAL as their Model United Nations off-season practice, I was certainly intimidated. Representing a country like Yemen, it would have been easy to stay quiet and let other countries take control of the committee. I was afraid that what I said would be uninformed or just plain wrong. That I would confuse parliamentary procedure and speak out of turn. However, after watching how the other delegates operated, I felt more confident and was able to contribute to the committee dialogue and resolution writing. After a long couple of days of debate and cooperation, my fellow delegate and I won the distinguished delegate award for representing Yemen in the Council for Social Affairs.
During the conference I gained confidence in my ability to speak in front of groups of people, a greater understanding of a part of the world that I did not learn about in high school, and relationships with students from other Ohio colleges who have similar interests to me. For me, participating in the MAL conference was stepping outside of what I was used to and comfortable with, and I will remember this experience as I continue to challenge myself throughout the rest of my time at OSU. I know the practical skills I learned will be useful, both for other MAL conferences and other future academic endeavors, but more than that I know that what I learned about myself will be far more important. While I found that most of my strengths were in the unmoderated caucuses, which focus more on informal relationship building, resolution planning, and direct debate, I also learned that I could make my voice heard in the more organized aspects, like formally addressing the council. Speaking up in front of that committee was one of the scariest experiences that I have had in my first year here at OSU, but it was well worth it.
