Where do I fit ?
There are 2 kinds of responses people have when they ask what I do as a living and I tell them I am an actuary…One response is “A what ?” The other response is “Wow, you must be smart.” Both responses are quite challenging. In both cases, I don’t know what to answer. To the first response, I answer something like “I make insurance products work.” I don’t know if that helps, but that’s the shortest I can come up with. To the second response, it’s even harder to find an answer. Am I smart? The reality is that you rarely feel smart when you’re sitting an actuarial exam. I would feel really good after a Maths exam in high school, but unfortunately I never had the same kind of inner confidence when I sat actuarial exams. I ‘felt’ smarter when I was in high school than when I was doing my exams to be an actuary.
Am I smart? I am smart enough to know that being smart is not all there is in order to move forward in life. Sometimes you don’t need to be smart, you need to be assertive, or you need to know the right people, or you need to communicate well… All those things that they don’t teach you at school. When I look through job descriptions for actuaries, they always want people with “great communication skills, oral and written, self-motivated candidate, excellent team player…” You’ve probably read those ads and thought “Wow, who’s looking for the stereotypical nerdy / boring smart actuary they portray in actuarial jokes then?” Seriously, they must be somewhere, these dull and unexciting actuaries that started the stereotype. They must exist. It can’t be all legends. But then, no company is looking for these actuarial geeks. After looking through dozens of job ads, no one wants a “verbally-challenged, anti-social, number-driven actuary”. Who’s going to explain to me what happens to the geeks? Who’s going to tell me where they work? Because these are the smart people a lot non-actuaries think of when you tell them you’re an actuary.
So I’m confused, because I’m just too cool to fit into the geek stereotype, but I don’t feel I am the communication expert companies are looking for.
Am I smart? I am smart enough to know that being smart is not all there is in order to move forward in life. Sometimes you don’t need to be smart, you need to be assertive, or you need to know the right people, or you need to communicate well… All those things that they don’t teach you at school. When I look through job descriptions for actuaries, they always want people with “great communication skills, oral and written, self-motivated candidate, excellent team player…” You’ve probably read those ads and thought “Wow, who’s looking for the stereotypical nerdy / boring smart actuary they portray in actuarial jokes then?” Seriously, they must be somewhere, these dull and unexciting actuaries that started the stereotype. They must exist. It can’t be all legends. But then, no company is looking for these actuarial geeks. After looking through dozens of job ads, no one wants a “verbally-challenged, anti-social, number-driven actuary”. Who’s going to explain to me what happens to the geeks? Who’s going to tell me where they work? Because these are the smart people a lot non-actuaries think of when you tell them you’re an actuary.
So I’m confused, because I’m just too cool to fit into the geek stereotype, but I don’t feel I am the communication expert companies are looking for.
Wow, thank you for writing this. I am in my second year in college, a math major, and have been contemplating whether or not actuarial science was right for me. But after researching for a long time, I was becoming intimidated and started thinking that I am not cut out for this. Now that I have read this, I may have found a new confidence and you may have made my decision. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI am proud I have inspired you to pursue the actuarial calling :)
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