OAKMUN

OAKMUN

This was the first MUN I attended as a delegate; but I had been to the Doon School MUN earlier as an observer. So I did feel a little confident and thought as though I knew what I was doing. However participating in an MUN as a delegate and simply watching it are two different things, there are many skills required as delegate and which can only be acquired once we are in the field.

Participating as a delegate for the first time I faced many difficulties and struggled to get them corrected as most of them were the fundamentals that take time to master. The first and key lesson learnt, was to do my research properly. Underestimating the importance of a position paper was a mistake not to be made again as it gives great insight into the country being represented and gives a good deal of confidence walking into the conference.

Confidence is another key aspect of delegation. Putting points across in a heated moderated caucus, making your presence felt by constantly forming allies and putting strong points across, for all the above confidence and a thorough study of your topic is a must. General knowledge and constantly keeping in touch with the world affairs is the only way a good debate or conference can be carried. I learnt this the hard way by embarrassing myself, thank fully not in public. But I was able to put across only a few points only to realize that my fellow delegates were way past that.

Many have the wrong impression of an MUN being a podium just for people to talk, however its 

purpose as stated my MUN’s world-wide is to come up with distinct solutions to current affairs and not just present own views. I observed that in any MUN only a handful of people have the skills to go past the talking stage and come up with pragmatic solutions. This simple reason for their possession of such skills was constantly reading and being aware of the affairs around us and their solutions. These are some of the very important skills that I am grateful for having been introduced to.

Vikarabad Trails

Start of the journey

The’ Deccan Trails’ our first stop in our road, which was CAS (creativity action service) and this road had the destination of the IB core requirements. So in essence whether we liked it or not, all of us had to be a part of it.

The camp site was located on top of a hill and about 2 hours away from school, that doesn’t sound as exciting I know. But 2 days in absolute serenity, with green beauty covering us really takes away that fact. Being in the school for 2 years, it was hard to get accustomed to the many new faces, this trip did serve the purpose of gaining CAS points but it did have a deeper and far more important reason which was bonding and getting to know our new classmates and friends. For this we undertook several challenges and team activities that would require us to exploit the advantages of people we didn’t know and work in everybody’s comfort zone. This of course led us to understand each other.

‘Balancing the board’ was the first task assigned to us after being split into groups/teams. It involved a great deal of communication and more importantly the coordination. The greater challenge here was that we worked with unfamiliar but new classmates, so it was easy for everyone to just shout and blame every other person for a group mistake. However there was an incentive as the activity was converted into a race, so differences aside, each and every group member worked to being more collaborative and tried to put in effective work. With the goal of reaching the finish line as quick as possible. There are two major things I learnt from this one, of course being that we must understand our partners in order complete a task and the second, human nature has been built in such a way that even though we may think team building and taking an initiative might be ‘lame’ in the end when there is an incentive to win, everybody does what they have to in order to win. Therefore there is no such label as ‘a cool thing’.

Our next task was rock climbing, which frankly was an embarrassment for me. As muscular as I may feel I am proud to say that I failed this task. However the crowning achievement for me here was that even though I knew to some extent that physically I had been lazy the past few months and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to complete it. My mind did not let me give up, I did manage to almost reach the top and it was solely due to will power. Had it not been for the will power I know I wouldn’t have even tried.

There we a bunch of other activities like, flying fox and the Burma bridge. But there are two activities that in my head stand out in terms of enjoyment and in terms of something new to learn. They were, treasure hunt and to compose our own music and present it. The latter was of course a tough one as none of my team members were musicians. The thing to watch out for in this activity and coincidentally in treasure hunt as well was that, we had to be observant and notice the minute details around us. I did try and put in all my focus into finding anything that would work be it a twig or a utensil.  Sid, one of my closest friends figured out a way to bring in different tunes by filling in the glasses with different levels of water and striking them with variety of forces. This act of creativity and interest led us to win the event. What I learnt from this was, creativity in our own field on interest is a necessity to succeed and more importantly to perform the task with pleasure and happiness.

The treasure hunt, as mentioned earlier managed to groom similar qualities in us except that this time we had to be quick in observing and registering. Cheating may have been acceptable here as long as we didn’t get caught (we didn’t.)

In the end, all of our differences were accepted by one another and at the end of the trip we came together as a class by understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Thadiyandamol Trek

Thadiyandamol is situated in the Coorg district and is roughly 1700 m high, making it the second highest peak in all of Karnataka state. This fact solely describes the challenge we are about to embark and it makes it a lot tougher for me since I have a speck of fear of heights. This was a perfect example for the famous speech, ‘face your fear’. This was my frame of mind when I was boarding the train from Hyderabad en route to Bangalore along with three of my closest friends. However what I didn’t know was how serene our destination would be and what a beautiful place it is to be in with your close friends.

The trek was conducted by our ex-IGCSE coordinator and our mentor on a personal level, which moved the trip higher on a pitch scale that reads emotions attached with the trip.

The start of the trek was easy as pie, a regular routine of paced walking coupled with a few energy bars and drinks that did the trick. Which basically covered the technical aspect of trekking; this part was the one that took us through forests and so protected us from the sun but the air density due to the high number of trees increased density. This was a different experience as usually we experience humidity etc. due to pollution and congestion in the city. However this time the place was polluted by trees and fresh, undisturbed atmosphere all around us which in fact distracted our minds from the humidity and the length.

What was yet to come was of a greater challenge and an unimaginable venture for me. After dumping our things on a flat surface, we picked up a few energy drinks and took off for the peak and the crowning achievement of the trip. On our journey to the peak I learnt many new things which I realized only after I reflected upon it. A trick that Mr. Srini (Our mentor) drilled into my head. The major challenge we faced was gaging each other’s pace of walking and needs, some of us required constant guidance with direction and the cautioning of danger (minute of course :P), this lead to another one of my learning’s and a rather important one. We must at any point in time, we must be aware of our surroundings, something that video games can never teach us, but nature did. And we must be prepared for unexpected things and adjust accordingly. Another important point to be noted was that each of us focused only on what we were good at and did only that, which made us more efficient and enabled us to complete the trek in time. A major realization for us was that we must know what we are good at and at this point in time and the risk level, we should stick to what we know and not experiment with what we don’t know as this could lead to the failure of every department. This encouraged team work, in an otherwise solo person like me. All of these that were challenges in the end turned out to be critical learning aspects for us to cache on.

The trip also contained educational aspects, taken care of by Mr. Srini who spoke to us about human evolution, the formation of the Earth, significant events like the Yellow Stone and the Deccan trap.

Altogether, it was a trip that explored my physical and mental strengths and showed me the path to growth. The trek alleviated me of many issues by showing me the other side of the world (the non-human empowered one).