you guys asked a lot of actuary questions so let's bang out some answers
if you want these actuary Q&As to happen more frequently be sure to leave
your questions in the comments down below let's go how did you cope with
stress and anxiety over your actuarial exams
I'll be honest some days very poorly lots of crying I'm a crier the things
that I felt really helped me in terms of stress and anxiety we're to one give
myself permission to take days off from studying I think that's so key to just
say today I'm gonna de-stress I'm gonna take a bubble bath I'm gonna go to yoga I'm
gonna go to Bali I'm gonna do whatever it is that I want to do that will take
me and put me in a better mindset so that tomorrow I can just come out at
clean complaining to people I find complaining to be like my number one
technique for dealing with stress and also just knowing why I'm studying like I
always knew alright I'm doing this because I want to become an actuary it sucks but
there's an end date and I hate my life right now but soon my life will be
better and like I'm done now and let me tell you it's better do you have any
advice on what students can do to learn about and stay up-to-date on what's
going on in the actuarial industry first thing I'd say is go on actuarial outpost I
know when I used it I mostly just went to the exam forums but there are general
forums that you can sort of look at and see what people are talking about what
is the goss the next thing you can do is I know that everything I say is gonna
be CAS-centric because I'm an FCAS I'm a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society no
big deal but when I was writing the exams I would get a magazine called
future fellows they put out specifically for people who are writing
exams and then they also have a few other free publications that you can
look out on their website or subscribe to as well I think this one called
contingencies also just reach out to your network if you have one that's the
best way if you know people working in the industry talk to them if you know
older students who've done internships talk to them just say hey what are
people talking about at the office word of mouth is the best way to keep up to
date with word of mouth will they have a social life if I'm studying actuarial
science did you have a social life before you started studying actuarial
science because if you weren't a social person before you probably won't be
after personally when I was studying for exams my social life was but *wah wah* between
exams the people that I was in school with the people that I was studying with
the people that I work with are some of the funnest people that I know I don't
know why people think actuaries are weird or socially awkward I mean we are
like socially awkward but we're fun socially awkward I literally just came back
from hot yoga I'm still in my sweaty yoga bra but I just was like I haven't
filmed in so long we're filming I don't care but I'm in a bit of a like yoga
high right now so forgive me would you recommend to someone who is not
interested in actually becoming an actuary but has the knowledge to pass
exams to just take the exams for the experience no no the exams are awful
like it's so stressful I mean if you want to do it
Yolo but I don't know what value it's gonna add to your life if you don't want
to work as an actuary non actuarial hiring companies don't really care if
you pass the actuarial exam do actuaries get to travel a lot I personally don't
travel much for work except for maybe jumping from Montreal to Toronto and
vice versa just because most of the actuaries in our company work in one of those
two cities so sometimes we like bounce over just to have like a let's hang out
and do actual work in the same place event now that I'm done my actuarial
exams I do plan to go to conferences at least once a year and there will be
travel involved in that what does an actuaries physical workspace look like
so I can't speak for all actuaries but for me I work in a cubicle it looks like
a cubicle it's a cubicle farm a floor full of cubicles my manager is in a
cubicle his manager is in a cubicle we're doing the whole like open concept
cubically thing going on sorry I do have a laptop so I can take my laptop home
and work from home if I want to but I choose not to
I do have co-workers who work from home like two or three days a week
how much coding do you do as an actuary and how complex is the code that you
write I don't think that the code that I write is particularly complex I mean
it's more than basic but not crazy algorithms it's a bunch of you know ifs
and mini loops I would say how much do I do depends on the project there can be
weeks where I'm coding 100% of my week in there could be weeks where
I'm doing everything in Excel which I guess you could call Excel coding but
like I don't I call the coding that I do is in SAS and VBA and I will eventually
learn R for me it's a good chunk of my time
for my boyfriend who's also an actuary who works for a life insurance company
very little of his time is spent coding if you're not into coding I would not
recommend P&C because coding is where it's at in P&C I mean you can do
other things but like it's fun big thumbs up if you want more Q&As more
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