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].