aggienaut | Nine Minutes!

Today I turned in the OPEC topic synopsis I'd been working on. At about five pages, its the longest synopsis I've ever written.

...
   It took them NINE MINUTES from the time I sent them the synopsis to fire me.

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   Nine minutes! Thats damn fast. But yeah, they called nine minutes later, the topic synopsis apparently wasn't long enough.

   Technically they didn't fire me though. It was more like "it needs to be longer" "well I'm definitely not making it longer" "well, we really need it to be longer" "well then you need to hire someone else." So technically I think I quit while politely telling them to shove it. It felt quite rewarding actually.
   Incidentally, I complained about how silly I think nine page topic synopsii about two weeks ago. The purpose of the papers is so give a brief overview of the topic, not do the delegates research for them. In this case, I could come up with five pages of overview, but if I wrote any more I'd cross the line into doing delegates research for them, and I'm just not going to drink that punch.

   Anyway, here is the offending synopsis, for you to judge yourself. Its still a next-to-final draft -- if they hadn't fired me I'd have inserted more citations (which I don't usually do until the end) and wrapped up the very end of it better, but neither of those things apparently contributed to their displeasure.

   Who needs AMWEST anyway?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

hired? fired? did they pay you?

Make sure you ask for it back. They're just going to hand your nine pager to the next person they higher and tell them to make it longer.

no they don't

Way to go !!!!

Do they want you to cover more topic areas or is the problem just the length?

Just length. They made no evaluation of its quality, all they want is length.

I thought about writing them a longwinded email citing my authority as someone who has been doing MUN for ages, been an SG myself of a similar sized conference put on by the same organization, and in all probability have staffed more AMWESTS than either of them (the Gov-Gen and Sec-Gen), informing them that their policies are terribly misconcieved -- that AMWEST will gain more respect from schools not by having the longest papers, but by having papers of the most appropriate length (and not watered down with bullshit to hit a high length goal and therefore boring / less relevant to read) and more over, quality of staff has a greater impact on the delegate experience than synopsis length and the best staff has better things to do than write nine page background guides for free -- leaving only the most desperate chumps to staff. etc etc, but to do so would just sound bitter.

Next time I'm in a room with the CEO and board of the organization I'll probably give them a little rant though, which will be much more effective (by which I mean it'll reach people who will consider it for a few seconds before shrugging it off)

I think that would be a great thing to tell them. Id call/email them and say that if the only problem they have with the guide is its length and they want a paper that is longer and less likely to be read by delegates, that they're going to have to find a less qualified and more desperate chair to write it.

Eh, I really feel like they'll just dismiss it as me being bitter -- and they've already had this policy in place for months and presumably extracted compliant synopsii from everyone else, and or turned over people in other committees until they got one

RELATED FACT: _I_ myself was actually shoed in late in the game to replace someone. I wouldn't be suprised if they too didn't want to write nine pages of crap for the conference! Which would clearly illustrate how they are losing their first choice staff and highly qualified second-choice staff until they end up with a third-choice ninny who'll write it.

Its also worth noting, that while their excuse for wanting nine page reports is, like all the silliest things they do, because they want to be more like nationals. For nationals, however, staff are motivated to write their ridiculously long background guides (aren't they like fifty pages or something?) because they (A) get paid a stipend; and (B) bring themselves glory because its actually published, presented to the UN, and filed in the Library of Congress -- Amwest cannot even begin to compete with that kind of incentive to spend one's free time on a paper.

Yeah, I do think its ridiculous that conferences are in this sort of academic-ness competition with each other. I'm told that for our school's (high school) conference this spring, our sg wants us to write 15 page background guides. What good does it do for anyone to have students read something that large and then tell them to go do research on top of it? ugh.

Bitterness aside, you certainly have a point. I suppose if you want to do it, you'll add four pages of fluff. Otherwise, I just tell them to piss off.

Oh, and nationals is never a fair comparison for circuit conferences. Most delegations that attend nmun a) do it for a class (and thus not only have academic incentive but a professor to consult) and b) attend only one conference a year. Circuit conferences are usually one of three to six that a team will attend a year, with substantially less (proportional) funding and without professors and TAs reading their position papers and talking points.

15 pages! Ridiculous!!! Can I tell your SG to shove it? This is getting ridiculous. They are completely losing sight of the purpose of a background guide.

And there's no way in hell the high school students are going to read all 15 pages.

I really really thing Amwest should just try to be a good conference in their own right instead of being obsessed with being a "practice nationals" type thing. They're a big conference in Fall, whereas most big conferences are in late winter or spring, they could own the West Coast Fall... but instead they're too busy trying to hump the leg of nationals to come up with a clear vision for their own success.

Eh, I'd be kind of amused if they did use it actually. Especially since it largely conflicts with the paper the other chair of the commitee wrote -- muahahahahahahahha

She seemed to have never heard of Peak Oil and throughout her paper its apparent that she does not think there will be any oil scarcity / shortages / substantial price increases in this upcoming century.

I remember [back in my day] when background guides were one page, single spaced for all three topics for a committee. And they often reused them from year to year.

While I've never been to AmWest (or any paxmun conference -- yet) I definitely think any conference that isn't a mega-conference (1500+) is under immense pressure to live up to the standards set by those conferences; they often lose sight of their own vision in hopes of living up to the big leagues.

indeed. I think two pages per topic is about optimum.

Nine Minutes!

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Just Because Nat'ls Does It

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