Jerry Alvarado

Advisory Reflection
December 7, 2012
Mrs. Minasyan
This has been a very productive year at V.I.S.A. I have grown as a global citizen and a
student, acquiring skills that will help me achieve success in whatever career I choose. This has
all been partly due to the Model United Nations class.
We spent most of the first semester researching a country to use in our simulations. From
about the beginning of August to the end of September, the country that I was given was
Australia. We wrote a small country report about the basic information of our country, which
included geographical, economic, political, and social facts. Among these were Australias
populations, demographics, GDP, exports, imports, land size, wild life, government leaders and
structure, and Australias relationship to other countries. By writing this report, I investigated the
world as I also had to find countries that Australia would naturally all themselves with on a
variety of topics. I also had to recognize perspectives, as I had to look at all the topics through
the eyes of an Australian diplomat, rather than an American. Generally, The United States and
Australia share the same view on the world. Both are democratic and capitalist societies so the
transition was not too difficult.
This class also helped me in increasing my public speaking abilities. In class, we have
given speeches various times. We have done impromptu speeches where we had to give an
effective speech with only five minutes to prepare. However, I never really enjoyed those
speeches. They were usually not easy to do but they did help with enhancing my thinking
process. We have also done informative speeches. We researched a topic over the course of two
weeks and prepared a two to three minute speech on the topic. My topic for the speech was
zombies. I talked about the origin of the concept of dead rising from their graves and how
zombies have changed drastically since the first zombie film, George Romeros Night of the
Living Dead. I gave examples of how they have become prominent in popular culture with new
shows and movies being produced regularly. I received an excellent grade on the speech, which
really surprised me. This surprised me because I didnt think that I researched the topic well and
I also thought that while I was up there I was really nervous and skipped around a lot. Although
surprising, I was still extremely happy with my grade. This helped me grow as a student as I
have improved my speaking skills and too some extent my research abilities. These will help me
in college where public speaking and presentations are almost a necessity and I assume I will
have to research frequently.
In short, this year has been a very productive one where I have grown as a global citizen
and as a student with the help of Model United Nations. I have developed the skills that are
needed for future success and have grown to a better understanding of the world.