My group played Budan in the simulation with group members Dane and Hadley. Nobody in the group had a specific role so we didn’t have group leader. We mostly just had one member who had experience with this sort of thing and was more than comfortable making statements about our country to the class. Although I didn’t talk that much on the first day of the simulation, I definitely felt prepared enough to speak. The packets provided before the actual thing were very helpful in understanding the situation. I liked how the packets didn’t provide too much detail of each country, leaving it a little easier to negotiate, depending on which country you were trying to do so with. Unfortunately the Empire of Budan did not accomplish it’s goal of having peace in its country by not getting a camp for the Rubits to leave in due to lack of funding. I feel that when agreeing upon a settlement initally with all countries and organizations, we were not fully aware of other aspects that would have to be established like what kind of housing was to be provided in the camp, how to stop soldiers from attacking villages, etc. I think maybe a list of objectives could be given to us when making a resolution so we would know what we would have to negotiate. I think the main struggle in the simulation was the resolution making itself on the last day because we didn’t know exactly what to agree upon and also some group members not taking others’ opinions into account when speaking for the country that we all represented. I really learned a lot on how these resolution making conferences really happen and more about Model UN. I learned how to talk to other countries and organizations in problem solving and mainly just how the whole simulation worked because I thought it went really well for our first time.
