The MUN way of learning

If you are a MUN-er, you probably already know from the title how this article will end. If you just now joined our MUN world... keep on reading! I am a third year student in BA Education Studies and as the title of my degree reveals I study how people learn. In other words, I explore the multiple strategies that people can use, in order to learn and the various factors that influence learning processes. No matter in which country you belong, no matter which Educational system you follow, what you do outside school in informal settings such as MUN is what makes a difference in your learning. So, if you want to know more relax and read this article because you are about to discover how MUN influences your education.   

How MUN can transform your learning experiences   

I will start by presenting my personal story and how I fell in love with MUN.  Back in high school when I started, I was terrible in Geography (I am still terrible). I was also terrible in building good arguments (I probably still am sometimes) so my debate teacher pushed me more into joining the MUN society of my school. After six years of MUN conferences and participation in a variety of positions I realized that the activities I did outside my curriculum in school was what made me an open-minded person with regards my learning. As a future educator, I now realise how learning not only occurs through your curriculum but through the activities you choose to join as well as, the skills you gain through them. MUN teaches you how to learn; how to research; how to communicate; how to read properly and distinguishing the arguments out of a whole text; how to write a speech or a resolution without being vague. In simple words, you become an individual able of handling different tasks at the same time, speaking in front of people without being ashamed and changing your learning processes in and out of school. 

 
MUN teaches you how to change as an individual. MUN influences your learning because it simply teaches you how to work on your cognitive abilities. Your attention, your thinking processes, your sensory motors are all activated at once. It is not only about the knowledge you acquire on the world outside your own world, it is not only about the friends and networking that you go into. Instead, it is about learning how to deal with problems in a more mature way, learning how to approach a debate and building a new argument no matter the topic you engage with. It is about learning how to communicate your ideas in an effective way, learning how to be yourself and standing for yourself, learning how to multitask when someone is delivering a speech and you need to juggle the information you receive with your own thoughts. 

 
Conclusion 

MUN is about learning how to change yourself in order to change the world and learning how to make the most out of all the extracurricular/ informal activities we join is the best way to change the world. Having said these, it is time for me to close this article with the following quote; “Yesterday I was clever, so I changed the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself” –Rumi, 13th-Century Persian Poet, Jurist and Islamic Scholar.