Friday 17 June 2011

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition 2011

On the first day I joined moots, the first thing the Dr Irwin, the moot coach said to me was;

"Congratulations on passing the audition, but that is just the first hurdle in your goal to mooting in Jessup 2011"

Yes. He had us aiming for that goal even from then. That was 2 years ago.

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Jessup Moots.

Like winning the gold medal of the race. The biggest enchilada of all things moot. The big cheese. 

Jessup is equated to be THE peak of excellence in which most (if not all) mooters will aim for throughout their mooting career. Every aspiring UiTM mooter were told from day one that we are to train our *ahem* laurels off in order to be ready to participate in Jessup Moots.  Of course, we were not exempted from this terms.

For Jessup 2011 the team consisted of Khairil Khalid, Izzat Asyraf Zamri, Arina Lum, Zharif Badrul and myself. We were guided every step of the way under the diligent supervision of Madam Azlena Khalid, Miss Ummi Hani and of course, Dr Irwin. Madam Mazlina was also always at hand to shed some light whenever we reach any sort of obstacle.

On paper, the preparation for Jessup took a solid 2/3 months. However in reality we were preparing for it for about a year. Eventhough we joined numerous other competitions however Jessup had always been the main goal. In that 3 months the team basically were living in the war room, immersing ourselves in every aspects of international law. 


Initially we were quite at a loss as to how to go about researching on the issues provided in the moot problem as out of the 5 people in the team, only two had studied international law and one of them (yours truly) had only studied it for one semester. So you can guess how frantic we were reading up on books or articles we could in order to get a grasp on the issues presented in the moot problem. 


Oral trainings were also all over the place. And I mean this literally. Not only did we spend any free time practicing in the moot court, but more often than not you could find any one of us stealing time training with the advisors in their rooms. The memory of trekking up the hill during lunch to train with Dr Irwin will be one of my favorite memories of Jessup =)


Overall, thank goodness there were the trainers and coaches. Needless to say, without them I think we would still be grasping in the dark until today!


To cut the story short, the whole experience preparing for Jessup had been filled with various ups-and-downs. We were unable to recreate the success our seniors had achieved last year, however I truly believe in the saying that "It is not the destination that shapes a man, its the journey". The moot team (not just the ones involved with jessup) managed to learn a lot from this experience, Insyaallah we will strive to be even better next year around.


We'll come back stronger than ever, you can bet your money on that *winks*


As belated as this may be, thank you to everybody who had a part in our fight for Jessup 2011, all of you are the real champions in our hearts.


To the Jessup 2011 team, thank you guys for all your dedication and hard work. Even after days gone by and nobody even remembers us anymore, I will remember every drop of sweat and tears which you guys have shed for this endeavor. You guys are the best teamates anybody could ever ask for, I love you people to bits.


Truly, no other words can convey it better than this; Thank you =)


Signing off,
Shairil a.k.a. Mama Shai a.k.a Retired Dictator 



3 comments:

chaZaZed said...

parfait!
;)

LJ Nurhadi Zainol said...

Congrats for making the cut. I wish I can go through the same. :)

Afif said...

You are all champions in our eyes; Jessup team 11 =)