August 26, 2008
Ah my 10000 pages of material arrived. Now to commit this to memory...
Managed to get through almost a month of studying now. Ended up going through relearning finance on HP and reviewing derivatives first because I was waiting for my curriculum to arrive, but now the real regimented studying begins. Holy shit this thing was HUGE. Originally I was expecting some Webster dictionary-sized book kind of like my larger textbooks back in college which I felt was hefty, but no major challenge to get through by the end of December. I was so naive. It's actually much worse than that.
I opened up my nice suspiciously heavy UPS package to discover seven thick volumes of material, each which would have been enough to be a full textbook for a semester-long class in college. Actually it is is probably more material than I read for my entire undergrad since I used to always just skim everything off the professors' slides and packets. Going through the first week of this was a major pain and several times I had to resist the urge to skip studying for the day and just go watch ToLoveRu or something equally stupid to kill brain cells and neutralize any progress made (p.s. Haruna sux. Lala 4 lyfe). As you can see, failures in willpower did occur.
Things are finally slowly getting better as I discover a more optimal scheduling. Memorization ability is better in the mornings so I have set a bedtime at 10PM no exceptions in order to wake up at 6:00AM. This gives me about 2 hours to cram in breakfast + study before going to work. It is also harder to get distracted because even with getting a full night's sleep, I mentally feel like waking up earlier than needed is a huge sacrifice and am less inclined to skip studying and blow it on doing something else. I gave up my chance to sleep in and by God I am gonna USE it wisely! This has so far been successful once I got adjusted to the sleep/wake times.
Of course now to fuck it up and get jet lagged to hell for Japan in two days. Animelo is this weekend!
Posted by Paranda at August 26, 2008 11:15 AM
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Comments
Came across this in some ADTRW post (also I'm pretty sure you're the guy who gave me the Shiina Ringo stuff a couple years back); I don't think you need to worry too much about the level 1 CFA. People like to complain about studying for tests, but a friend of mine with ZERO finance background (compsci major who went to law school) recently passed the level 1 test with about 2 months of studying for ~1 hour a day. She's fairly smart, but not a genius or anything.
Level 2 on the other hand sounds really unpleasant.
Posted by: Zach at August 26, 2008 12:59 PM
Oh hey a fellow alum. You remembered right. That was me :)
Yeah I have heard horror stories about level 2 involving testing the nuances of valuation for each instrument down to ridiculous levels of detail with very liberal point deductions on slight mistakes due to the curve. Aside from straight up memorization of "AHA! THIS PASSAGE APPLIES TO THE GUIDANCE MENTIONED IN SECTION 2 A, AS OPPOSED TO SECTION 3 D BECAUSE THEY INCLUDED A SINGLE WORD" types of problems, Level 1 doesn't seem so daunting in terms of getting a general understanding financial instruments, valuation, or overall economics. The biggest challenge is pacing properly to deal with the volume rather than complexity.
Posted by: paranda at August 26, 2008 6:22 PM
have fun at animelo! :D
maybe this trip will power up your batteries to survive your hard study! good luck :)
Posted by: yokohama at August 29, 2008 6:31 PM