For those of us in the MUN community who have ever called ourselves the wrong country, tripped in our heels on the way up to the podium, or accidentally motioned to table the chair…even the best of the best mess up.
For the sake of lightheartedness, laughs, and MUN spirit, here is a compilation of the Best Delegate staff’s most embarrassing MUN moments—to prove that sometimes, everyone has #MUNproblemz.
“In my first simulation I had not one but two embarrassing moments… I remember I was in the seventh grade, and I was representing Peru, when I got up to give my position on the topic, my voice got so extremely high-pitched that people actually motioned for me to speak in a lower tone.. I was unable and simply sat down. Also, I’m one of those guys who uses laughter as a defense mechanism when I’m nervous, and I remember a random delegate making a joke about something and literally me bursting into laughter–I cried because I laughed so hard—and they had to bring the sub-secretary general to calm me down.” – Cristobal Cardenas
“At McMUN this year, I was on my way down to my first committee session which was on the very bottom floor of the hotel, so I had to walk down a LOT of stairs…I was also wearing some pretty high heels. I was almost to the bottom and then saw someone I knew and got distracted. Before I knew it, I totally WIPED out on the stairs, broke my heel, and bruised my ankle, in front of what felt like EVERYONE. So, one of my friends had to grab me shoes because committee was about to start, and I had to walk into committee barefoot.” –Amy O’Halloran
“I was the delegate of France and I thought it would be interesting if I gave my opening speech in French. Five seconds through, the chair interrupted me and told me to just go back and sit down.” – Shreshta Balachandar
“I was Peru and they called Pakistan to the floor and for some reason I thought in that instant that I was Pakistan so I started walking up, and the actual Pakistan (along with everyone else) just looked at me like I was crazy and then I was just like ‘oh, just kidding…’ and sat back down.” – Sarah Collins
“I decided to say welcome in the six UN languages during my welcome speech in the UN General Assembly Hall as SecGen of GCIMUN. Except I accidentally said “shalom alaykum” (mixing Hebrew and Arabic) instead of “salaam alaykum” for Arabic. I didn’t realize it until all my Arabic and Farsi-speaking friends were like ‘what did you just say?!’ and several Jewish delegates told me my speech was awesome.” – Kevin Felix Chan
“Once, my extremely attractive chair was walking towards me in the hotel lobby and I accidentally walked into the boy’s bathroom and a guy in there looked at me funny…I ran out of there and my chair was right in front of me…we had a good laugh about it the next committee session though!” –Nikita Barde
“My first great act with my first gavel was to hit myself in the face with it. After falling up the stairs when I went to accept it. Oh, and the only thing written on the box was the chair’s phone number.” – Ellen Perfect
“At CMUNC last year, it was my turn on the speakers list, and I proceeded to walk up to the front of the room all confident and ready to say my opening speech. Right after I said ‘Thank You Honorable Chair’, I dropped my entire research binder, and all of my papers literally fell out onto the floor. I stared at my binder for about five seconds, then I just laughed it off.” – Parth Shingala
“The first time I was chair of a committee I forgot to call attendance. And so when I asked if there were any motions on the floor a friend of mine called a point of debate to remind the chairs: ‘Hey, Have we called attendance yet?’ It was really a blow to the whole ‘powerful-and-in-control’ chair feel.” – Soraya Ferdman
“As a JHUMUNC delegate my sophomore year, which was my first conference, I gave a big speech that another nation could rely on free maritime trade at the ports in my nation, because a crisis was the shutdown of a major port city. I later remembered I was representing Macedonia, which is landlocked.” – Ajay Nadig
“During my freshman year of high school, I was in the same DISEC committee as one of the best delegates from our school. I asked for some advice, and he suggested I go up and make a speech about turning the Earth into a Death Star and shooting all nukes into space. He even gave me a Death Star toy that Taco Bell had given out at the time to use as demonstration. I took his advice thinking it was a great idea (as a naive freshman) and delivered the speech… except right when I took out the Death Star toy to demonstrate in the middle of my speech, my advisor just happened to walk into committee to see it and did the biggest facepalm ever.” – Kevin Felix Chan
“Every delegate dance is my most embarrassing MUN moment.” – Ryan Villanueva
