YMUNT Reflections

Incredible team; one of the best I've been a part of. Edit: post writing this, maybe this is a bit glazey and not completely true. However, fantastic trip and experience regardless.

I'll begin with the short criticism I have: Nick gets upset over seemingly unimportant things and embarrasses teammates in front of others when doing so is certainly not necessary. I certainly don't appreciate his doing so with me on three different occasions. It's very weird and really pisses me off and I wish I had said something; almost uncharacteristic of me to not have done so.

Besides that, I thought it was very well-planned. People in the high-workload positions clearly cared about the outcomes as a reflection of their effort. It was at times misplaced effort and I think it's very important to know where you can let people off and where you need to be stringent. The age dynamics also make it complicated; somebody with lesser experience and knowledge than I shouldn't be correcting me considering those two factors are what determine who is qualified to correct whom. However, I really liked the practice of debriefs and the team-building activities we did with the newer members of the team (high school ASGs). They had a very good time and went above and beyond in their work; that sort of thing only happens when people feel good in the place they're at. Meetings could've been more flexible given how pointless they often were.

Also really great speeches from Nick and Evan. It has been a solid minute since I've heard speeches I really enjoyed and found authentic. I take inspiration from their originality. Nick gave the audience an insight into his journey through the slides and individual teammate mentions and Evan was very clever, direct and funny. No clichéd yip-yap about generally true stuff ("we need to save the world, you are the future" etc). The speeches were what they should be.

Guest speakers were unnecessary, I think this is a concept we should do away with. Effort that doesn't yield much and I don't think I've ever heard a speaker say something relevant, largely because they are saying things to kids they don't know and will not see again. There is no equity in the situation. The kids don't know them either so it's just a thing that seems 3/10 cool to have on paper but is a giant waste of time. Just have more useful stuff–or don't.

Venue was pretty great overall and hotel being close by was good, although AirBnb was far better and four people living in one room with one bathroom is a horrible living situation for such busy days.

I also appreciate how responsive everyone was throughout the conference and their eagerness to receive feedback to make things better.

I appreciate being careful about the safety of younger people, but again: overdoing it has diminishing returns. No hugging etc is OK but having an issue with Directors shaking hands with their delegates to congratulate them is retarded. Not letting me text my Assistant Directors is retarded. We need to actually critically think about the position we're taking instead of adopting blanket policies based on one belief (i.e. safety=no contact). That's n0t how you teach people to be respectful, nor how you ensure it.

Another deplorable thing, in usual Yale MUN fashion, was that directors were not up to par. We need to stop taking people just based on being cool people, and if we're doing so, need to make sure they know how to do their job well. Take more people with MUN experience. Mostly everyone is pretty chill in my opinion so I don't think you can go too wrong with it.

An awesome part of the trip, though, was meeting so many smart, talented, passionate people. The trinity of clichéd college student descriptions, and yet it stands true. Anthropology/geo-ethno-graphy wiz and odd, perceptive filmmaking stalwart and articulate young lady etc.