​For the last two and a half years, I thought I had my career mapped out - keep passing actuarial exams and keep moving up toward senior management. An actuarial career is a perfect example of 'climbing the ladder' in multiple ways, from passing the exams to the career path. Once you're on the path toward becoming an actuary, it's a relatively safe, known path. I decided to major in actuarial science five years ago, so it was a difficult decision veering off course.

Prior to reading Lean In, there were very few instances where I've seen people reference a career path as a jungle gym. After reading the chapter where Sheryl Sandberg compared her career path to a jungle gym, I felt a lot better about my decision to take my career in a different direction - I'm excited to climb the jungle gym! 

There were three driving factors in my decision to leave an actuarial career - actuarial exams, passion, and professional development. If you feel like you're in a similar situation where you aren't 100% committed to an actuarial career, I hope this post can provide some inspiration!  

After close to two years, I was still at 3/10 CAS exams passed. It would most likely be another 7-10 years until Fellow. After passing MFE, I fell into an exam rut. I tried everything - I found a nice study space outside of my apartment, I set daily phone alerts, I changed the background of my phone to 'keep calm and study hard' and I tried using snacks to reward my studying. After sitting for Exam S twice, I gave myself an ultimatum - if I didn't pass in October 2016, I would start looking at non-actuarial opportunities. I gave it my all - easily studying around 300 hours and I still couldn't pass. 

I can name around ten factors (some may call them excuses) that probably prevented me from passing. At the end of the day though, it came down to this - I would rather work all of those extra hours than study. That's huge - the whole point of passing these exams is to make the big bucks (I must've spent hours memorizing the D.W. Simpson salary charts a couple years ago) and still work 40-50 hours a week down the road. This is the selling point of an actuarial career - stable job, relatively low stress, forty hour work weeks and great money. All for the low price of 3000+ hours of studying!

For me, the major selling point of the actuarial career was the money - NYU wasn't cheap and student loans don't pay for themselves! It took me two and a half years, however, to realize I was paying for something I didn't need - the job market is booming and I don't mind stress or working long hours. I would rather work long, stressful hours than study for a significant portion of my life.

This brings me to my favorite internal struggles - "but you've already put in so much time and you've made so many sacrifices!" and "now people are going to think you're a quitter!"

I learned about Sunk Cost Fallacy in college - but in practice it's not an easy concept. It's taken me some time, but I finally decided even though I've spent hundreds of hours studying over the last few years for these exams, it's not worth the continued struggle. If I feel this way now, I can't imagine how I would feel five years down the road if I continued on the same path. I'm doing my 30-year-old self a favor right now! This is proof!

I also realized - no surprise here - actuarial exams are HARD! Lots of people stop taking these exams. It's not because they are quitters - it's because they are actively making a choice to pursue other interests! Also, for what it's worth, according to google, a quitter is a person who gives up easily or does not have the courage or determination to finish a task. So basically a quitter is someone who studied for Exam P for one day, took the exam, failed, then gave up on an actuarial career. If you've passed at least one actuarial exam, you've done something a vast majority of people in this world could not do - there's no way you could call yourself a quitter!

I also found myself considering whether I could be happier working in a different field or if I could have a larger impact in a different industry or role. I'm really passionate about data analytics - I'm constantly finding ways to analyze and improve the web traffic to this blog and run marketing campaigns for my resume review business. I like working with data visualizations and figuring out the meaning behind the data. While there are some actuarial positions that focus on data analytics, I decided I didn't want to fully limit myself to insurance.

If you're going to climb a jungle gym, you need to know when it's time to grab the next rung. It's important to let your passions help shape your career. If you're not feeling fulfilled in your line of work, it may be an important time to reevaluate your career and consider a change. If you are currently an actuarial analyst looking for a change, the opportunities outside an actuarial career are endless. Many roles require a lot of the same technical skills you've developed as an actuary and would provide new ways to apply your skills and give you an opportunity to learn more outside of the insurance industry. 

Professional development is key to having a successful career. If you are looking to move up into senior management, you have to have a lot of different skills across the board including negotiation skills, communication skills, an understanding of business programs and processes, and leadership skills, among many others. It's important to take a look at your long-term career goals and determine whether your current career path will provide you with the skills to meet your goals. If not, consider a change that will help you develop those skills.

If you find yourself working by yourself on many projects, you may want to find a role where you will be able to work closely with others to improve your communication skills. If you have only worked on one type of project, you may want to branch out to find opportunities where you are learning other business processes. 

When deciding to pursue new opportunities, I had to take into account my current skillset and strengths. Would becoming an actuary play to my strengths? Would I develop the business acumen and leadership skills necessary to one day lead an organization? It's definitely possible - there are actuarial positions out there that can develop these skills, especially for those working in consulting. However, for me personally, I determined there were other career opportunities available that better align with my strengths and skills.  

Insurance companies have a lot of data. Depending on the company and position, you may be working with millions of rows of data. When you're working with a lot of data, knowing how to program is key to speeding up processes. It's just not practical manipulating a million rows in excel - you'll end up waiting all day for excel to perform functions on millions of rows, especially if your computer isn't equipped with adequate computing power. As an entry-level actuarial analyst, your focus may be on how to manipulate the data to quickly get only the information useful to you. Going one step further, you may need to analyze a dataset based on multiple characteristics and find anomolies. You may find that some data is inconsistent and may require data cleansing. In some cases, a lot of behind the scenes data preparation will be necessary prior to creating a model or forecast. 

With that in mind, you can't go wrong in learning intermediate/advanced excel features, VBA, SQL or R during your winter break (or any break!). Below is a list of great resources to help you get started!

If you're a full-time student, you really can't go wrong spending $72.50 on this course. This course covers all of the technical skills actuaries should have including basic/intermediate excel, VBA, Access, SQL, and SAS. It also includes actuarial projects, too, so you are able to apply what you learn in each module. Access to this course is 12 months, so this is great if you're midway through senior year and want to get a jump start on your technical skills prior to starting full-time. After completing this course, you'll have all of the technical skills employers are looking for in their actuaries!

Chances are, you've had to use excel at one point or another for certain college courses. Even if you think you are already pretty good at excel, chances are there are some really great tips and features you're missing - especially tips and tricks that can save you a lot of time!

222 Excel Keyboard Shortcuts - This is definitely worthy of a hard copy - tons of time saving shortcuts, especially when it comes to selecting and making changes to data. 

20 Useful Excel Tricks - There's some overlap from the link above, but these excel tricks can also save a lot of time!

Excel Trick - Really great site with lots of excel advice and step-by-step guides on how to use different features, such as named ranges and other popular features. 

VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is very useful, especially if the majority of your work is in excel. From the automation of pivot tables to using ActiveX scrolls, learning VBA can really help make your life easier and reduce the amount of manual work necessary to perform repetitive tasks. The following sites and courses are all free and allow you to learn at your own pace. 

Youtube Videos - If you learn better through visuals, I recommend checking out the following two Youtube channels - YourProgrammingNetwork and ExcelVbaIsFun. Both channels have a lot of positive reviews and comments and serve as great resources for learning how to program in VBA. 

Guide - If you prefer learning through written guides, this Excel VBA Programming site is a great resource with a lot of different sections to teach you VBA basics. 

Course - This free blackboard course is the perfect resource for anyone looking for a more structured course to learn VBA. 

SQL (Structured Query Language) is also an important programming language and many actuaries use this in their day-to-day roles. Some insurers may keep all of their premium and losses in separate tables for separate lines of business and may require analyses on specific types of policies based on a handful of fields.  
Knowing how to code in SQL can definitely help you pick up other programming languages, such as SAS. Unlike VBA, some SQL servers have slightly different syntax (i.e. MySQL vs PostgreSQL), so this is something to keep in mind when you're learning SQL. However, a strong foundation in any given syntax can be easily leveraged across the board. 

Guide - W3schools is hands down the best resource for learning SQL. There are a lot of paid courses out there, but this free guide covers everything you need to know to use SQL. 

Youtube Video - This hour long video is also a great resource for learning the basics and has a lot of positive feedback. 

R is becoming increasingly more common to find in actuarial work, mainly for its versatility and its open source nature. If you have a statistical analysis you need to perform, chances are you will find the right add-on you need in R. There are also other tools, such as Power BI, where you can actually code in R to create visuals. The possibilities truly are endless, making R a great addition to your technical skills! 

Guide - This guide can help answer any quick questions you have as you begin coding in R. 

Course - This free four-hour course is meant to give you a solid foundation in understanding the basics of R.