what really p*sses me off is the fact that had i just gone to work for a bank, i'd be paid a lot more by now and my free time would actually be free.
Do you really think you would have more free time if you worked for an investment bank? I know people who work in banking, and I have so much more free time than them, it isn't funny.
Even with the exams, I think that we actuaries have quite a lot of free time compared to other professions - that's certainly the case if you work for an insurance company, rather than a consultancy.
But I do see your point. The exams are kind of soul-destroying, and always having study to contend with does make it hard to plan other things to do with my free-time. If I were finished with work stuff when I leave work, then I'd probably fit more into my free-time, even if I was working longer hours. As it stands, I kind of stay in a lot, just in case I'm in the mood for doing some study.
I'm just in the middle of my third sitting, and I feel like I've lost focus a bit already. It's not so much that I don't have time to study. I just think the exams are so pointless and boring. CT5 for example seems like a throw-back to the days before computers were invented - lots of fiddly calculator work and use of the tables, with hardly any emphasis on understanding. And there's a misprint on the April 2007 papers that seems to indicate that the people who set the exam lack a basic understanding of the material - just makes me wonder what the point is really.
I thought that the point for me is that one day, I'll be earning good money, in a job with low-stress and low-hours compared to jobs that pay a similar amount. But with the way the life and pensions industry seems to be going, we're not even guaranteed that. And with the day-to-day work being so unrewarding, I sometimes think that it's only inertia that stops me looking for a new career.
Regards,
Sam
ps. all this is written in the post-exam-blues frame-of-mind. I'm sure that in a few weeks, I'll remember how good we actuaries have it.