PREPARING FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

As I type these unsavory words on the keys, I feel emaciated regarding the inceptive peptic feeling I had when I embarked on a certain journey. That I have sank deeper and deeper into emptiness and apathy is a stigma I cannot explain. I have this invincible feeling that makes me kind of miserable. I feel like I want to express my feelings sincerely, but I cannot. Diction is elusive.

You see, I keep on bawling like a baby and throwing tantrums like a toddler in my quest for attaining things. Which makes it hard for me to get a grip on my own mind. I feel desolate and want to childishly say, ‘I want my mummy.’

Every negative emotion is buried before I can even feel it, making me passive and weak and every other feeling is crammed into my chest. Problem is, that space is getting so full, so much harder to ignore. Some inner pain is bottling up and I feel like I want to release the internal pressure that is astronomically turgid. Even my personal happiness is tinged with sadness. I  find myself caught between feelings so antagonistic to one another.

How do I defuse this bomb without triggering the damage I seek to avoid?

I think it’s legit to fail. Like every other soul, I fear failure. That is why it took me more time than ever to sit down and pen this post that was haunting like the spirits of the dead are which I feel are roaming where I am, walking around as ghosts. In my small room making me have hellish dreams that are unimaginable. Slowly, it is sinking in. That, yes, at some point in life, failure is a must whether we prepare for the feat or not.

I had been waiting for my CFA results but I was having this mixed kind of feeling. I was scared and equally confident even though pessimism was at a higher percentage than expected.

About a year ago, I wrote about the feeling of passing CFA exams here. A year later, am writing about failing. Yes, I failed and I must admit that I rest the blame entirely on my lack of preparing well and greed for petty money that never helped me out in any way. I cannot account for anything worthwhile out of the cash anyway.

 As I had intimated before, I was cynical about the results after sitting for my exams. I knew I had not given my all in terms of the requisite preparation required to sit the exam. I was wobbly somehow.

Looking back, it has been a lesson well learnt. That it is only responsible to go to a battle well-armed to the teeth and never leave anything to chance for the enemy to detect the loopholes if any and use it to disadvantage you. And in the event they detect sloppiness, you have a fall back plan that resuscitates the battle and you bounce back with an epic resurgence.

I must admit that I prepared well for the enemy given that I was average in terms of the scores that I had in my final results. The only problem was that I never put my skills into use before going to face the enemy. I never did pilot editions, auto simulation and trial and error mockups in my quest to conquer. I was ill prepared because of fear. Fear is bad.

I must admit that I was not as thorough as I should have been. The extent to which I had whet my intellectual acumen was not as nimble.

There were many days I wasted on the run up to the exam engaging in futile trivialities. But the biggest reason why I was ill prepared was because of being stressed. Especially at the workplace. I only revised consistently for only a week. Which is not adequate.

I was stressed out in my job. I have come to learn that a sedentary lifestyle is crucial if you are preparing for an exam. If you are up and about, chances are you will never be settled and ready to tackle an exam without having trouble in executing that which you wanted to achieve effortlessly without I wish I knew.

Now I have this heuristic feeling that has made me strong.

When I was preparing for the exam, I never took into consideration the revision part which is very crucial. I was adamant in revising using questions preferring to dwell on notes as opposed to doing similar exam questions to prepare myself for what lay ahead.

The truth is that I read everything that I was required to, twice. Unfortunately, when it came to the questions bit, I never took them seriously. I thought I was a genius. Therefore, there was no need to dwell into questions because I could use my mind to piece up those that I never understood.

I remember a certain friend telling me that there is a high likelihood of passing the exam if you guess rightly by doing so intelligently. I really laughed and told him to guess in two exams because they are closed ended questions and he ended up scoring only a third of the questions correctly. I had disputed his assumption and it turned out right.

There is nothing as demanding as preparing for a CFA exam. It is a mere six-hour exam that makes you a social recluse and an academic nerd that whether you pass it or not, you know where the shoe pinches.

I did fear taking exams to gauge myself on where I was strong and in instances where I was week. Plus, I was using a computer and using it proved kind of tricky for revision purposes especially when doing scenario based questions. Lesson learnt, the antiquated way of revision still outdoes using softs. It is best way to you use papers and books to read and revise as opposed to using computers and phones because the radiation effect may transpire.

I barely did two exams before taking the main exam. Which I never even finshed. I did one and failed disastrously and thought of focusing on mastery of the notes as opposed to trying out other exams. That was another receipt of a havoc in wait. CFA is a question based exam and the many you can tackle correctly with ease set by different course providers, the better for you as an individual because you will be able to get the gist of the content.

The exam bit was my weakness because they  essentially help in testing knowledge that is presumed you have got through studying the coursework. It did measure my knowledge and the truth is that I was deficient in making it to the few who passed it successfully.

Would have favourable results changed my fate? I doubt. There is no employer who recognizes the value of an employee who only has knowledge unless the skills and knowledge result in revenue on the part of the employer. Hence you may have knowledge but if it takes time for it to be fruitful, then you are as good as a waste. Which is not essentially true.

During the exam, which I did and though was not that hard as I had thought, I felt like I was preparing for the wrong questions. While the questions I was tackling were direct and straight forward, those that I had used for revision were complicated and too much time consuming I felt that I did not need them for my revision purposes. Little did I know that they were crucial for the ultimate goal of doing the real exams that is graded and can help or may not help in later life.

When I finished the papers, I instantly knew that I was having a fifty-fifty chance of passing the exams. And truth be told, I had been praying silently that the exams be favourable owing to the many hours I had put into study and the nights I had decided not to go and party. But critically looking at the hours, I was not as thorough as I should have been in optimizing them to the fullest.

There was Whatsapp that was a distracting tenet, and the need to play Candy crash when I was bored. I never pushed myself to the limit this time round like I had when I was doing my level one exams. I should have pressed hard. I should have revised more. I should have dedicated more time not reading like a stuttering preacher reads the bible but spent more weeks answering exam questions. My memory capacity then could not be able to retrieve the prior information and put it into good use in answering the exam.

Then the day for receiving the exams came and I was eagerly waiting like my friends were. There is a friend who I knew would not pass exam owing to the fact that he had not revised as he should have for exam. He did a mere three weeks for revision which is abnormal because he studied for one and half months for the course work. I remember see him struggle and I knew he was a disaster in waiting.

The morning when the results were to be mailed, I went and check my mail but found nothing. Yet the actual time for transmission was 0900hrs ET time. During the rest of the day, I kept on refreshing my mail and it was not until around eight in the night when I woke up from a siesta to find my results and the regret message that I was more than expecting.

I should say that in the event that I could have passed that exam, then I would have been a genius. I would have screamed my heart out for the entire world to know I had been victorious. Because I was doing two jobs, and reading at the same time. But it was not to be because I ended up failing and I had crafted my own casket. They say as you make your bed, so you must lie on it. I am lying on the after effects of my own making in failure.

Since I normally work at night, that day I felt disheveled and weak. Yes, it was eminent but the truth is that we all expect good results at the end of the day. Chances are, I would have worked better and energetic would I have received good results. At that moment, my eyes started becoming glazed with a glassy layer of tears and they almost slid from my cheeks but I courageously snuffled. It’s not like my life would end if I did not pass. I was too sad to I wanted cry out and wail. I felt a burden had clogged on my system because it had choked the little hope I had out of my heart.

I felt like I wanted to sleep. Yet I could not slumber once in bed. Thoughts were like a carousel in my head. To kill the antipathy, I remember calling my friends and they intimated how they could not work that day. Well as opposed to them, I was able to work until emotions raged high because I could not be able to find work online and my hourly earnings were plummeting at an evanescent rate which made me want to crash the computer because I have got this temper. I decided to go and sleep it off. To forget about the sorrows, the sacrifices, the friends I have lost and the job I would have been in had I not been so much focused on the exam at the expense of exam.

Now I have learnt it the hard and better way. I will devote time like in my quest to nail level two like I devoted time for level one. I have learnt how to be dedicated and stick to rote come what may. I think passing the exam is not as important as what it inculcates and the knowledge you gain. While it would have boosted my ego, prepared me for the next phase that is the final leg, it has taught me more in my everyday life.

In the event that I had passed, I would have gone to the next stage with some braggadocio buoyed by the fact that I can do two jobs and still focus on studies and pass. Wrong. You cannot have three competing fledglings happening at once and you expect that you can juggle them successfully. At the end of the day, you will lose one, two or all.

I ended losing the few friends that I had after that. Someday, years from now when I will finish my CFA exams because I am planning to finish it come what may, I will rekindle the friendship if it can be rejuvenated. I feel like I have lost a lot. Nobody even calls to say hi even though I bought a phone. Even my immediate kith and kin that include my mum and dad have gone mute. I have not told them about the results and will tell them later on when I feel philanthropic enough.

Even the gal I used to talk to who was a soul mate went mum and I think she will never talk to me again soon because she is the type who catches feelings but never admits that she feels let down. And she will not blink first, neither will I.Both egotistical individuals who fear expressing their minds or letting go of the pride. Apparently, she is the type who asks how was your day when you call because she thinks she needs to know what happened. I once told her I took a certain lady for lunch and I could tell in her voice that she was not happy about it. That's it.

I bet we all go through this life’s moments. They are what make us strong. I know this is a season I will overcome. In the meantime, I will continue praying till something happens.

Hasta La Vista Baby

[Picture Source: My own].

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RESULTS

The man on the horse sees a city, let's imagine he is living in medieval times. With a horse he will have to undergo a lot of torture before he arrives at the destination. He will get tired, the horse may develop an attitude or he might confuse his way to the green city assuming it is full of milk and honey. In either way, if he is determined, he will reach his destination safe and sound. 

I am through with the first huddle. Some months back, the real person of this blog character undertook a course in the highly coveted CFA Institute. He even resigned from his job believing it would hamper his chances of passing the exams one off without having to go through the protracted process again. Now the results are out. The dreaded results that made him panic just by the mention of the name results. The heart was constantly beating and he knows of people who have not yet opened their emails to receive their results. He was among the list of 43% of candidates who passed the June 2016 Level I CFA exam. 

Let him now take the first persona to intimate about the joy of passing what is called the Mt. Everest of Finance. He had to sneak from work to go check his results because he had no smart phone or computer on his desk. His manager has both, but he could not request her to open his email and check whether he had passed or not. So he sneaked from the office for ten minutes and went to a cyber cafe to access the results. And luckily, the first email he saw had the word ‘CONGRATULATIONS’, which caught his eye. He then relaxed and mumbled a silent prayer. Here is his version of the story.

There are three instances of anxiety in a fresh CFA level I student if the candidates I interacted with are anything to go by. The first is that of not completing the syllabus in time, the second is that of tackling the exam and the third is the fear of results. There are many others including the lead up time to doing the exam or the time it takes to receive results which is usually exact given the previous record of the past events.

I must say I was never anxious or did ever panic when I was to go to for the exam. As opposed to people who do 300 hours of study, I probably doubled or tripled the minimum time required for the exam. That shows how focused I was in my determination not to fail or how daft I was in not acquiring concepts fast enough to be able to replicate the same on an exam. Luckily, that taught me something very vital, that all you need sometimes is to eat, live and think about one thing and then you will be good to go. I cannot say that I wholly dedicated my time to studies. However, there are certain times I felt like giving up since it was also perilous. You either study or fail to put in enough time to peruse. There is no short cut. As such, during down moments, I would take to blogs or YouTube for the much needed emotional support and determination to conquer the elephant in the house. It is also this process that taught me how to be an early riser. Though I had been an early bird, I lost the sheen sometimes along the way but henceforth, I have been waking up early even when I am not supposed to be doing so. That is the extent the CFA exams takes you.

Many times, I wished I could finish doing all the questions I was given but could not. I would procrastinate with them even though I did about seventy percent of those questions. Some were too easy and while some were just a headache. Fortunately, there was a certain program that used to provide me with those questions even though it was outdated. I used it because I was not chummed enough to buy the current version. Even so I prepared painstakingly. The program I used was called QBank and it had over 3000 questions and mock exams you could be able to do on your own. This is because the syllabus is supposed to be covered based on a personal initiative and self evaluation is the only way to gauge your level of concept acquisition. If you rely on tutors, unless you are sharp, you may only cover up to 20% of what is required of you in each unit. The content is quite wide and that is why on a bare minimum, you need to do 300 hours.

Allow me to narrate a little bit about the exam day. I met my close buddy, Julius who we were studying with and we went for breakfast in a certain restaurant in town because he lived in town. You need to eat before tackling such an exam. He was the guy we used to do revision together, made fun of the ladies in the institution we were in and generally did lots of guy stuff together. On our way after the chow, I met a high school buddy who was nicknamed Major and used the name all the way to campus. We were also together in the drama club and in campus though he went on to study law as I juggled economics and statistics. I introduced him to my pal and wanted to know if he was among the few chaps who were the new millionaires in town given that their firm had recently given out bonus in excess of $100,000 to each employee in the firm. He laughed off at the notion and become cagey about it which implied we needed to discuss on other matters of national importance no, hustler vs proletariat issues.

The usual process of security that has become a norm in Nairobi was carried out on all of us on arrival. We talked about a certain tutor of ours who had shifted base from their firm and he said he used to be a good friend of his. Then the thing of queuing made us lose sight of each other until we were at the exam room where we sat few metres from each other.

When I entered the exam room, some soft music was serenading the air. I don’t remember what music it was but it was relaxing. The venue was KICC at the heart of Nairobi City. It was situated in the Tsavo ballroom to be precise. Hitherto, I had never set foot in KICC. It was my first time. I loved the carpet. The ambience was intellectual and relaxed. I was slowly telling myself, “Don’t panic.” A certain chap had told me that the reason why people fail in exams is because they panic.

I went and sat on the wrong seat, but before I could settle, the owner was on my heels telling me it was assigned to him. I realized that my seat was not in the front but at the back. I was to seat next to a certain Indian guy, in his thirties and very friendly. We talked in English. It’s unnatural for me to talk in English, but if it were a fellow African, I would not have minced my words n starting out in Swahili. But this was an international exam, so you never knew if it was a Rwandan, Tanzanian, Ugandan, Ethiopian or one of the neighboring countries chap seated next to you.

I take time to feel free with strangers, but this guy, let me call him Shah was quite amiable. We talked about so much stuff ranging from where we worked, his view of mock exams and other dude stuff even though he told me he was married and had a master’s degree with another professional paper title under his belt of academic achievements. I was jobless, but said I was working for myself. I was operating this blog and that is work, right?

The exam started and one funny thing about this exam is that you are not supposed to talk about it once it is over. Rationally, it is not easy to recall even twenty percent of the questions that were set. That is the conclusion that we reached once we finished doing the first paper with Shah while discussing about it. Let me confess that what you are required not to do is what you end up doing. Even though we discussed few questions and how to approach them, there is no way we would have delved into everything that was set.

I also noticed a certain chic we were in campus with seated two desks from me. I was like, ‘Today, I will be courageous enough to face my fears and talk to her.’ She was working for one of the big four audit firms which was my dream place to work in but after completing campus but my campus results and time rendered me irrelevant for the job. So I am now a banker, working as a salesman whose job is not guaranteed unless the numbers magic in terms of bringing in sales results work in my favour. If they do not, I will continue finishing my professional paper and writing stuff on my blog. But man never gives up. I will only give up when I find an employer who will offer me the platform I require to progress the skills I earnestly need to propagate. But in the meantime, selling is nice. Though figures do not come that easy.

I never managed to talk to her. Even in the four years we were together in campus, I rarely recall a day we had a chat. She was elusive, and still after the exam she still was. But now, I am sure I will have the courage. Just to ask her how the exam was and probably if she can be my client. Those are wishes, which beggars would ride.

After the exam, we were hosted for dinner in a certain restaurant. We had planned to go for a night out but the buggers I was with were not ale sippers. As a result, I headed to the digs because partying on a solo basis is a no for me. Plus I was exhausted after the exam.

About two months later, the results are out. Unluckily for me, my employer does not recognize professional papers unless your performance is good in the field when you are a rookie who has less than two months in the job. I am still waiting to show my prowess in this new field which is not as mundane as being an office nerd sticking to routine even though it's full of ups and downs. It also helps me with finding new stories and inspiration about my shoes, the inside of the collar of my shirt and the many things I usually pen about when I have no clients and instead of feeling beaten up, I get to do what I also love.

The problem with my job is that is takes anxiety away, you are worried about making the right phone call, ensuring the client gives you an appointment and if he or she does, you end up closing the sale which may also result in the person being your friend and over time, start reading your blog and give you worthy referrals who will give you an appointment and in the long run help you have those numbers and hence you can be living happily ever after when matters monetary are mentioned.

I remember my friend Eugene calling me feeling anxious about the exam results. He did certain quizzes two days before the exam and when he could only manage a mere 20%, he felt devastated. But I told him those were the hardest questions he could have ever done because they were set by examiners who knew that soft spot of candidates given that they normally overlook certain topics while revising. He called me like two times, feeling jittery and how he could not sleep the night before the release of the results. He kept on monitoring his email and as a result, I also started feeling the pressure from within. Never mind that I was 70% sure I was not going to fail and 25% sure I was going to fail. There is the margin error of 5% which increased or reduced the two chances.  

When he finally got his results and he had passed, I got the morale to also go and check mine. I sneaked from the office, went to a cyber café and opened the dreaded email. My job allows for sneaking from the office from time to time. If he had told me he had failed, I would not have gone to check the results. I would have waited till the evening to check them. However, I was cock sure that he was my S.I unit given that we usually performed in the exams with few marks between us.

I remember waiting to for close to five minutes but exercised patience because I did not know how to log into the computer I was using in the cyber café. Eugene was the first person I called and went back to the office feeling very confident even though I still indifferent because I don’t know what the reaction of my colleagues would be if I told them I had passed. There are few who know about this exam plus I had not told them I had taken this exam. Yet am still two levels from completing them. That I passed the first level means if I dedicate myself to what I currently am doing, then the sky's the limit.

Hasta La Vista, Baby.

[Picture Source: My Own].

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