Georgia State University held its annual high school Model United Nations conference on November 12 and 13 and served as an intermediate conference to North Cobb’s new delegates. This conference marks the first time that the group partnered new delegates with those more experienced.

Head delegate, senior Megan McMillan, states she made this choice to prevent the well-known confusion associated with a delegate’s first conference. Meetings taking place during the weeks leading up to the conference served as training sessions for new delegates.

“To prep the new delegates, I planned lots of practice debates, and went over material countless times so they won’t forget what they’re supposed to wear, bring, as well as how they’re supposed to act,” McMillan said.

This plan ultimately achieved success with North Cobb taking home multiple awards including position paper awards for senior Nick Nasr, junior Rebecca Goldstein and freshman Sarah Punch, an outstanding delegation award for senior Zach Connolly and freshman William Willis, and honorable mention awards for juniors Anabel Prince, Octavian Amechi, and the overall delegation of France.

Delegates both new and old took away strong learning experiences from the conference: “I learned that you have to be humble because there’s always someone better than you. I was one of the youngest kids there in a group of juniors and seniors who really knew what they were doing, so I would try to say things and they would always have a comeback,” sophomore Jessica Campbell said

While Campbell had attended the conferences before, GSU served for many as their first Model UN conference.

“I think it was definitely a new experience for me. I haven’t actually been anywhere in Atlanta, or to any university before. So it was very different but I liked it. I want to keep doing Model UN,” freshman Liam McFarland said.

Other new delegates tend to agree: “It was great. I had a lot of fun, learned a lot of things and got to miss school! I made some new friends I probably would have never met, it was very fun overall,” freshman Ian McCullough said. When asked if he planned to return to Model UN and compete at the Kennesaw State University in March, McCullough enthusiastically confirmed.

While the conference offered a fun and enriching experience for some, this did not serve as the case for every delegate. For junior Holden Haley, this meant missing the first day of conference due to accidentally sleeping in and missing the 6:30 meeting time at the front of the school.

“[Missing the first day] was terrible because you miss the establishment of what’s going on. If you don’t know what’s going on then you can’t argue, unless you’re just arguing to argue,” Haley said.

When asked what advice he gave to future delegates, he replied, “Set an alarm.”

Seeing as the GSU conference serves as the first attempt at new delegates’ Model UN career, the results of this conference proved stellar.

“It was a really unique experience because while I did the new delegate conference, that was mostly just with a lot of other unexperienced people, so this was my first time participating in a conference with people who have done this before,” senior, and first time delegate, Sam Fulkerson said. “It was really overwhelming at first because I had never done anything like that before, but by the end of the first day going into day two, I got used to it and I got in the zone. I was just the delegate from Iran!”