The Actuary - Student Page

Anyone else think the new student page is pathetic/embarrassing?

 

it's very important to set apart the clearly immature part qualifieds / "students" and the proper FIA's

 

Before criticising too harshly on this forum I've 2 questions:

a) When there was the opportunity to write that page, did you volunteer?
If yes, then please accept my apologies. I have no idea what the criteria is on selecting authors but I doubt they were deluged by applicants

b) Have you contacted the authors to express your views, and importantly, give input as to what you would like to see.

In my opinion, anyone that volunteers to combine study and production of these items should be ebcouraged. That doesn't mean agreeing with what they produce but offering constructive feedback direct to them.

I've no strong views on the page. It is different to anything seen previously and in a way, how they bring out actuarial principles in the answers is perhaps clever. I just don't take it too seriously. Life is too short.

 

It's nice to have a light hearted part of the mag. The longer articles are good, but the legislative snippets aren't exactly my choice of reading material after a day at work.

What's the ratio of qualified readers to student readers? If students form the majority, maybe we should create a motion for the magazine to become student orientated with a one-page space for the qualified to have their say.

 

From Jen&Jean

Aha! Aha! Finally! After 3 months of the student page, we finally get some feedback...

Thank you bystander and OneLastTheorem for your support. As we see it, The Actuary is already full of long, serious articles that is surely enough to whet the appetite of the mature students / part-qualifieds and IFA's - what we want to do is bring across student issues in a light-hearted manner. And to have a page that people actually enjoy reading (and not just one which you read because you feel you have to). Yes, so we talk horoscopes and agonies, but dig a little deeper and you may find the actuarial references ...

We are keen to receive views from people - constructive criticism is always welcomed - if you want to see something on the page, tell us. As such, response has been limited - I was very tempted to post something here, but King got there before me!

Gareth/King, this is your opportunity - why don't you write in to us with exactly what you want on the student page? Write us an article, contribute something.

If it's not too boring, we may even publish it.

 

Rattle some cages at the institute. Invite people to write in with their stories of substandard service and appalling admin (I’m betting you won’t be short of responses). Write about their inflation-busting subscriptions. Question the need for the superfluous ‘work based skills’. . . . etc

And, not sure if it would fit in the ‘caveat corner’ quote bit – but how about “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. “ – Donald Rumsfeld - its vaguely actuarial.

 

Talking of questioning things - what about this stupid modelling 2 day exam / course?

If I didn't have these skills I would not have a job in DFA modelling. Why on earth do I need to waste 2 days of my employer's time to prove I can do it to the Institute???

Next moan is why is CA3 examined as a hand written exam? Do we expect our examinations to be taken seriously if we make members prepare Powerpoint presentations by hand? I was talking to a non-actuarial friend about this and he thought the idea of trying to prepare slides on paper and drawing little rectangular boxes was incredibly stupid... and we wonder why actuaries have a reputation for being a little odd...

What about the written questions in CA3 - is it realistic to do a first draft and then re-write a final version? Why not supply laptops to replicate the real life environment?

I personally have not written anything other than exams by hand since I was about 16. I find it quite difficult to get my thoughts together on a language / wording issue, without the flexibility of a wordprocessor.

 

Interesting

I find that, even when I have a word processor to use, I draft and mess around on paper anyway. I suppose different people will have different preferences.

Whatever the examiners do, I'm sure someone would complain about it.

 

There seems to be a bit of divergence above from the original title of the thread...

In an attempt to bring it back on track, the editorial in the Actuary this month certainly made me smile

 

Along with the known knows, known unknowns and unknown unknows, don't forget the unknown knowns.

They're when you didn't know that you can actually answer a question on a random part of a course that you read (once) about 4 months ago.

 

Jen&Jean reply

As a note, we are intending to tackle CA2 and CA3 in a future issue... the problem we have is one of space - we are only given one page (despite various requests for a second page), and it is difficult to talk about the variety of issues we want to discuss and still keep to the word limit. In fact a lot of the things we put in get cut, so we have to find ways to rework them into a future issue, but there is a delay as each issue has to be written a month in advance.

King - good ideas - why don't you actually write in to us with your views on the matters you raised? In fact, anyone with views on the issues King raised, or even general comments on the Student Page - EMAIL US! We like hearing from people!

With such views in hand, we can then carry out the appropriate "investigations" with the Institute...

 

Student Issues

Gareth - I've put your comments regarding CA2 and CA3 to the education department at the Institute and asked them to prepare a response to feature in an upcoming issue - thank you for the input.

When we took over as student page editors, the first article we received was a standard study and exams piece. We thought it would be verging on patronising to publish yet another article telling professional students how to study, so wanted to move the focus of the page away from exams and study and give people a chance to write in about wider issues. However, contributions have been somewhat thin on the ground thus far, and without feedback we can only guess as to what issues you would like us to talk about. If it is exams and study, please let us know. If something else, please let us know what that is too!

_Jen_

 

How about more photos of the lovely Ms Eu?


Perhaps instead of those "comedy" horoscopes, which are the definition of space-filler.

 

Sounds almost like doing a CA3 exam

 

Yup. Every month. But more fun.

Space filler? Or perhaps food for thought? As in they require the use of your imagination... and surely we actuaries do have an imagination...Or will we succumb to the stereotype?

More ideas... we like ideas... ideas are good... write us something... (especially if you have nothing better to do after these wonderful exams are over)

 

The space fillers shall continue until someone sends in material to replace them...

 

i do wonder though why we need to seperate between the "students" and the actuaries in the magazine. Is it not possible to have both part and fully qualified members contribute to the magazine in its entirety.

I'd actually like to hear about recreational topics relating to actuaries too, or are they a different beast to those still doing exams?

If horoscopes are a popular feature, why can't this be a general part of the actuary? If we have a "student" area, then I would have thought topics like how to cope with the exam / work / fun balance, things relating to study technique etc would be better placed.

Do we really need to draw this big distinction between the two groups? Maybe I am being too negative (quite possible!), but there are many part qualifieds who are well respected in their own right (e.g. Andrew Smith) and I wonder if by having this student section, we are just sending the wrong message?

 

Because when you pass it (fairly easily) your employer will treat it as an exam pass and review your salary accordingly!

As for the Student Page, I think they fabricate the letters they print from readers!!!!! CONTROVERSIAL!!!

Here is a suggestion: Why not let readers write in with answers to problems. There was one answer of their's to do with an unemployed student finding work. I thought the advice given was bad advice. Sorry, but if a student is having trouble getting their first job they should drop on-line applications right away. If a company has an on-line application system it is usually because they get about 100 application per vacancy and need a machine to bin 90% of apps right away. A better approach would be to get your cv written by a professional cv writer and mail directly to actuarial managers, bypassing HR completely. How long does it take to do an online app? If done properly anything up to 3 days!!! Only to get a reply saying "Sorry you're unsucessful and we don't have time (can't be bothered) to tell you why". Time taken to mail a "killer" cv? 5 minutes. Which will make a bigger impact? All my interviews were from cv applications, not a single one from online apps. Unless you got 3 A grades at A-level and are a captain of a sports club stay well away from online apps. So there is my advice!

 

Actually my company don't link salary to exams at all, it's purely based on performance (hence I don't have a lot of motivation to qualify!)

 

Definitely space filler.

Random words for horoscopes - a funny idea - funny once, not every issue.



Just my 2p. Maybe half your readership think its hilarious... and for those people, "gallant wardrobe kicks alphabet sarcastically".

 

Possible student article

how about writing a page about student study support and the differences between the different companies. I think best in table format. This would be a very good read. This might have already been suggested as i m sure i heard of this before.