Graduating soon and worried I won't find employment

[Peetie Skunk]

Originally Posted by AAABBBCCC

no its not. not even close.

This troll with less than 100 posts is right. Its harder.

When I was working full-time and going to school full-time I still had a lot of free time. Now I go to work all week, get off work and study till I go to bed. On the weekends I wake up and then study till I go to bed. Not a whole lot of free time there. Thankfully I love what I do.

[Annie Howe]

You should take all this advice under consideration, I am pretty sure you will have to work + study continuously in this career... However, as I said you don't sound confident. Make sure when you say "I can't do this", that you actually can't or don't want to do this, as opposed to just saying that because you are simply too hard on yourself.

Are you diagnosed with Asperger's or is this a self diagnosis? Some people who I thought would have Asperger's for sure, in fact didn't. They actually scored a little higher than average on tests, but apparently scored average for us mathsy types and waay below an actual person with Asperger's.

[Vomik]

Originally Posted by Peetie Skunk

This troll with less than 100 posts is right. Its harder.

When I was working full-time and going to school full-time I still had a lot of free time. Now I go to work all week, get off work and study till I go to bed. On the weekends I wake up and then study till I go to bed. Not a whole lot of free time there. Thankfully I love what I do.

Yikes I don't know if I could keep up a schedule like that. I finished my FSA with no failures in under 4 years and never studied more than maybe 4 hours a week (outside of my 10 hours a week allotted at work.)

Are you sure you're not exaggerating?

[Stan]

Originally Posted by Vomik

Yikes I don't know if I could keep up a schedule like that. I finished my FSA with no failures in under 4 years and never studied more than maybe 4 hours a week (outside of my 10 hours a week allotted at work.)

Are you sure you're not exaggerating?

You are definitely the exception. It took be about 5 years (with two failures) but I had to study my butt off. For the FSA exams, I spent almost 600 hours in total studying for each exam (150 of which was company time).

[Vomik]

Originally Posted by Stan

You are definitely the exception. It took be about 5 years (with two failures) but I had to study my butt off. For the FSA exams, I spent almost 600 hours in total studying for each exam (150 of which was company time).

I memorize things very well and typically just read the source material so it's a leg up with exams, but even your schedule isn't as insane as his. You sound like you studied a reasonable amount of study hours and the FSA exams are definitely time-consuming if you can't read very quickly... but I can't imagine spending every waking moment on prelims. It has to be an exaggeration

[deathfrombelow]

Originally Posted by Vomik

I memorize things very well and typically just read the source material so it's a leg up with exams, but even your schedule isn't as insane as his. You sound like you studied a reasonable amount of study hours and the FSA exams are definitely time-consuming if you can't read very quickly... but I can't imagine spending every waking moment on prelims. It has to be an exaggeration

This is definitely a "your mileage may vary" thing. Some people need 400 for a prelim, and some need 75. Personally, I would have found another profession if I had to study like PS describes to get FSA.

[Vorian Atreides]

The bigger question is where are you starting from and where do you need to get to.

For some, they need to spend a bit more time to get there because you have further to go (or it takes more time to get things to sink in properly).

For others, they "see" it much sooner, so they may not need to spend as much time studying.

For me, I spent a total of 40 hours studying for my first actuarial exams (and passed), but spend a little over 400 total hours for Exam 4/C (more from the need to work faster, not knowledge/comprehension).

[Hero3128]

Originally Posted by bertuary

PS. It will be next to impossible to get an internship once you've already graduated.

Agreed. The main reason I went back to school was to get an internship. I just couldn't get a non-teaching job with a Math Ph.D. and no experience other than teaching.

[SyZ]

Wow, lots of responses since my last post ...

So I don't really know how much I should post but all of this seems at least partially relevant:

1) I signed up for the May 10-11 exam, I just purchased http://www.actuarialbookstore.com/pr...d_id=453062364 but have not started studying yet ... so that leaves me with about 40 days and I need to study anywhere from about 120-300 hours in addition to my last term's worth of work. Not sure why I'm mentioning this since I guess everyone on this board has been working/studying 15 hours a day for 10+ years to get where they're at ... just not sure I can do that. I could do that these next 3 months if I really focused but I'd probably lose what little hair I have left and gain 20 pounds from stress

2) I've seen a psychologist four times and she thinks I have 'borderline' Aspergers because I was one criteria short in a category for it. However I have Social Anxiety Disorder which is basically the same thing in terms of 'panics every time a question is asked in an interview and 100% of the time on the job when something unexpected or new occurs'

3) I'm taking the exam no matter what and going to try to pass it, but if I don't and move to another field, what should I look into? I can't really be a statistical consultant and this is the 'mathematical' field every person in authority I've talked to about the subject told me to get into

4) How do you guys handle not knowing something when you're studying? I just looked at three more sample problems and had no clue what was going on: I've never been taught moment-generating functions, I've done a total of two weeks of variance-covariance matrices, and I misinterpreted a pdf in a problem and totally did it wrong. How do you react to this positively or in a manner that leads to productivity rather than just saying 'wow, I suck. This totally isn't happening'

[AAABBBCCC]

Originally Posted by SyZ

Wow, lots of responses since my last post ...

So I don't really know how much I should post but all of this seems at least partially relevant:

1) I signed up for the May 10-11 exam, I just purchased http://www.actuarialbookstore.com/pr...d_id=453062364 but have not started studying yet ... so that leaves me with about 40 days and I need to study anywhere from about 120-300 hours in addition to my last term's worth of work. Not sure why I'm mentioning this since I guess everyone on this board has been working/studying 15 hours a day for 10+ years to get where they're at ... just not sure I can do that. I could do that these next 3 months if I really focused but I'd probably lose what little hair I have left and gain 20 pounds from stress

2) I've seen a psychologist four times and she thinks I have 'borderline' Aspergers because I was one criteria short in a category for it. However I have Social Anxiety Disorder which is basically the same thing in terms of 'panics every time a question is asked in an interview and 100% of the time on the job when something unexpected or new occurs'

3) I'm taking the exam no matter what and going to try to pass it, but if I don't and move to another field, what should I look into? I can't really be a statistical consultant and this is the 'mathematical' field every person in authority I've talked to about the subject told me to get into

4) How do you guys handle not knowing something when you're studying? I just looked at three more sample problems and had no clue what was going on: I've never been taught moment-generating functions, I've done a total of two weeks of variance-covariance matrices, and I misinterpreted a pdf in a problem and totally did it wrong. How do you react to this positively or in a manner that leads to productivity rather than just saying 'wow, I suck. This totally isn't happening'

I dont know man... These exams are pretty brutal for someone with panic attack disorders. You do realise that some indian guy is going to be watching your every move through a glass window while you are punished with tedious BS exams?