Thursday, December 14, 2006
Actuarial Hesitations
One of the things I wasn’t looking forward to when I decided to become an actuary again was getting my FSA, which is a Fellowship of the Society of Actuaries. Which basically means that I’m an uber-geek in the eyes of my fellow actuaries. It’s the highest level you can attain. And all I need to do to get it is (a) sit through 10 hours of actuarial seminars and (b) write a research paper on something actuarial. I’m dreading both.
One of the “nice” things that SOA (Society of Actuaries) does is that they let you listen to audio tapes of prior seminars instead of actually attending the seminars. The first problem with this approach is that they give you cassette tapes. I don’t have a cassette tape player. So I had to steal an old walkman from my sister. I’m sure she won’t be missing it any time soon.
The bigger problem with these tapes is that they cover actuarial topics. Even as an actuary, I find them hard to listen to. The problem is that actuaries are dorks. We all know it. We all admit it. Hell, we even kind of LIKE it. But none of us like listening to each other talk. Because, honestly, if we were talented at anything other than math, we wouldn’t be actuaries. And so listening to us talk is about as exciting as watching Paris Hilton doing long division. And that’s when we’re talking about fun things. Combine our public speaking skills with actuarial topics and you’ve got a rather lethal combination
So I’ve been sitting at my desk, listening to these lethal tapes on an old walkman and staring into space. Surprisingly, this does not make the day go by quickly. I’ve started poking myself in the eye with a pencil every 10 minutes just to relieve the monotony. I suppose that the good news is that Geeks, Inc. allows me to listen to these tapes during the day, when I should be working. Of course, the way it actually works is that I only get to listen to the tapes when I’m not busy. So, in other words, my “down” time has now been filled by Actuaries on Tape. By the way, once I’m done with my FSA, I will be selling these tapes on Ebay, mostly as sleep aids.
One of the “nice” things that SOA (Society of Actuaries) does is that they let you listen to audio tapes of prior seminars instead of actually attending the seminars. The first problem with this approach is that they give you cassette tapes. I don’t have a cassette tape player. So I had to steal an old walkman from my sister. I’m sure she won’t be missing it any time soon.
The bigger problem with these tapes is that they cover actuarial topics. Even as an actuary, I find them hard to listen to. The problem is that actuaries are dorks. We all know it. We all admit it. Hell, we even kind of LIKE it. But none of us like listening to each other talk. Because, honestly, if we were talented at anything other than math, we wouldn’t be actuaries. And so listening to us talk is about as exciting as watching Paris Hilton doing long division. And that’s when we’re talking about fun things. Combine our public speaking skills with actuarial topics and you’ve got a rather lethal combination
So I’ve been sitting at my desk, listening to these lethal tapes on an old walkman and staring into space. Surprisingly, this does not make the day go by quickly. I’ve started poking myself in the eye with a pencil every 10 minutes just to relieve the monotony. I suppose that the good news is that Geeks, Inc. allows me to listen to these tapes during the day, when I should be working. Of course, the way it actually works is that I only get to listen to the tapes when I’m not busy. So, in other words, my “down” time has now been filled by Actuaries on Tape. By the way, once I’m done with my FSA, I will be selling these tapes on Ebay, mostly as sleep aids.
