Does not meet minimum requirements
Ugh. Feeling miserable, sad, and defeated. I'm using this space to complain about it. I failed the SOA's Final Assessment, the final hoop to jump through in becoming a real actuary. This morning they shot me a curt email, slapped with the header FAP FA Fail Result. The unwelcomed email lacked constructive feedback, but included my binary grade for the failed attempt, "You have been graded as Does Not Meet Minimum Requirements."
Fuck.
I'm entitled to one F-bomb a year in my blog in a desire to keep it PG-13. When people advise you write an angry letter without sending it, this is my equivalent, essentially an angry rant to flesh out my feelings.
I thought I passed. I poured 72 hours of toil into a 26-page attempt that I was proud of. I took two days off from work and paid $1200, a looming exam fee that I'll have to pay again. I waited an entire six months for a response. In the interim - sure of a pass - I planned an expensive trip to celebrate the assumed achievement. Now, at the bottom of a hurdle that I failed to clear, I'm left counting all my dead chickens. And damn, there are so many dead chickens.
I can't even say the degree of deadness because the SOA doesn't provide feedback on the life-altering milestone. Some degrees of dead are better, and it'd be nice to know if I'm making an omelette with a yolk or a fetus.
The timing of it all is the most infuriating. I started this process at the beginning of 2021. The best case scenario, the SOA will hand me my certification letters in 2023. I'll retake the exam in August 2022, which will give me two post-busy-season months to relearn the material, mind you, the material that took eight months to swallow the first go around. It's been six months since I've even looked at the exam material.
Just to salvage the textbooks for the exam (buried deep in the closet) I have to fight off oversized spiders and established cobwebs. When I co-signed on the spiders' mortgage, we both assumed the residence would be permanent. Guess not though, now I have to evict the sorry buggers.
Actuarial exams are hard, character-defining* hard. They have a significantly lower pass rate than The Bar and require an even longer study horizon. The average travel time, from start to FSA, is seven years, four more years than law school. To become a lawyer you must pass one different exam; to become an actuary, you must pass ten. I'm not saying it's easier to become a lawyer, but I am saying that I'm bitter about my failure and want to contextualize away the grief.
*The kind of hard where failure is assumed and you must make a character decision to either move on or complain about it. I'm still in the anger stage of grief, so I'm choosing the latter for now.
The failure makes May awkward. When my coworkers ask why I'm taking a week off, I won't have a good answer.
"Hey Jackson, why did you spend 7K and take the first week of May off? That's the middle of busy season and we need you then."
"Well… do you know how a significant aspect of our job is making assumptions? Assumptions that support the foundation of most of our models. Yeah, I suck at that part of the job… Anyways, thanks for picking up my work while I'm on a conditionally unjustified vacation. I'll send a postcard."
Ironically 1/8th of the FA's content is about setting appropriate assumptions, so maybe I do need to retake it.
But on the flip side, I really don't want to. My original 26-page response was baller. At the time I turned it in, I was confident of a pass. I understood the questions, gave great responses, and invested time in well-written actuarial vernacular. I even built impressive charts and graphs to support all of my brilliant points. I don't understand why my masterpiece was rejected.
*Self reflection editors note: According to Merriam Webster, Hubris is defined as exaggerated pride or self-confidence. In classic Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero.
**Editor's response to the editor's note: Hey! That was mean. I worked hard for that test. I have a right to be upset.
***Editor's response to the editor's response: Entitled much? Anger stage? Scoff, try denial. Come at me bro! Let's go!
****Editor's response to editor's response about the editor's response: Ok… this is getting too dumb.
***
That ends my rant. Please send your sympathies to the comment section. If I don't see you in June or July it's only because I'm grudgingly studying to retake the final assessment in August. Yuck.
