First Entry - ridiculously exciting stuff

Hello internet people.

This is my first blog of ever, and if you're reading this, you're probably another candidate for the CFA. So to you I say good luck!

I'm pretty much one of the biggest sarcastic pessimists of ever, hence the title of this blog. Despite that title, I actually do plan on passing this thing, even if it kills me. The gym has taken a back seat, my warcraft addiction has disappeared (1 month off! yay for me!), the girlfriend has been grumbling about neglect (which is kind of not a new thing), and my friends are forgetting what my face looks like. But the point is this; to pass this thing, I am willing to take the four month sacrifice on my life to just sit around, read, scribble, read, scribble more, hit head on desk, read, and so on to pass this.

I'm no poindexter though; come the second I'm finished in June, for joy or for sorrow, I am going to obliterate my brain cells with unsettling amounts of booze. I am going to hit that bottle like it owes me child support. Til then, I got stuff to learn. Keep in mind that I am sarcastic. I am going to write a lot of things that are meant to be ironic, or exaggerations, or obvious lies/misrepresentations for the purpose of my own personal amusement. This blog is, in theory, a tool for me to better understand my progress and game plan as this exam approaches.

So here it goes:

General Strategy:
this is what I did for level 1 and so far it's doing the trick for me on level 2:
- Official CFA texts; they are collecting dust in my closet. I don't want to look at them, they hurt my eyes and my brain. In my opinion, they are an inefficient way to absorb the information required to pass these exams.
- Study notes; I went with stalla. schweiser's probably fine too, but that's just the one I went with at level one. No complaints, so I'm continuing to use it.
- Word docs: When I read the Stalla books, I have a word doc open and rewrite the important things in my own words. This helps comprehension, and gives me something I'll understand quickly come review time. I have one doc for every Stalla reading (sometimes Stalla combines related CFA readings. For example, readings 14,15, and 20 were combined to form a single Stalla reading.) They have roughly 2000-3500 words, and I anticipate that range to expand as I get deeper in. I have Word 2007 which allows me to write down math formulae too, that feature is very nifty. It's like lube; once you've used it, you wonder how you ever got along without it.
Sometimes I see other people's books, and they've highlighted the crap out of it. I don't do that because I don't think it does anything. Highlighting it won't make you learn it more, and seldom do I see a line that singlehandedly gives full comprehension of the entire paragraph on its own. Long story short, if I read something and find it's important, I rewrite it in my word doc, in my own words, and in full context. Highlighting is for lazy pussies.
- Problems/Questions: Stalla has a question bank with a shit ton of questions. I started out by trying to do them all, and then I realized, that's going to take too much time, especially if I'm doing redundant questions. My new policy is to do every third question. This allows me to be tested with questions that range across the full reading, instead of just being hammered with earlier questions, and never getting to the later ones. Another advantage to this approach is that come review time, I will still have unanswered questions to do that will cover all topics, instead of seeing that I've done all the earlier ones, and have only the end ones left to do. Odds are, I probably won't completely remember how to do all the earlier ones, so I should be doing questions on those early concepts later on.
- Lectures: Stalla recommends having read the text and learned the material before you go to a lecture. The format of the stalla course I'm doing has lectures at the George Brown U of T campus. I went to the first couple, but so far I find the 3 and a half hours are better spent studying. Also, I get fucking hungry in there, and that is annoying as shit. Also, many of the people in the class looked like douchebags. (This one white guy was wearing shades inside, slick christian bale style hair, a cheezy blazer, blackberry texting during lecture, and a look an his face that said he couldn't wait to be a greedy-ass banker. wtf is up with that? Why does Finance always seem to attract douchebags like that? And also, it was pretty much a sausage fest in there)
Anyway, another reason I don't like to go to them is that they have to cover a shit ton of concepts over that time, and although 3.5 hrs sounds like a lot, you can really only scratch the surface since they're covering an entire study session. I may go to some lectures later on, but I'm finding that they're kind of a waste of time. Just my opinion, feel free to disagree and write me posts or emails about how dumb I am for thinking that. I'll save myself some time and give my reply to above mentioned critical posts/emails in advance; I don't care, and go screw yourself.
- Time budgeting: I have the good fortune of not being tied down by kids, or a job that requires a lot of over time. I work 9 to 5:30, my commute is only 20 minutes walking, and all in all my life setup right now is pretty accommodating to my shut-in lifestyle choice for the next 4 months. I do 3 hours per weeknight, unless I go to the gym, which is probably twice on weekdays. I'll still squeeze an hour and a half in if I go to the gym. My weekends are also obligation free. Quitting warcraft 3 freed up a surprising amount of time in my life, so I get a minimum of 6 hours done on Saturdays, and maybe 4-5 on Sunday because I cook my food and put it into nice little tupperware containers so that I don't have to cook over the course of the week. Saturday nights I usually get wasted with my girlfriend/room mates/friends/minors I invite to my house from the internet. (they puke quicker than my friends, so it makes for a fun show)
-Flash cards: this would probably be more useful if my commute was significant. I'm not worried about memorizing all the formulae, and I think doing questions, reading the text regularly, and hand writing formulas a few times to memorize them is a better approach than looking at these flash cards.


I can't think of anything else to write. 110 days to go, so I better get back to studying.
I'm not attaching my study notes because I'm pretty sure it would be copywrite infringement, or if not that, illegal in some other kind of way. I don't feel like being sued by Stalla, so if you want to see my study notes for a given reading, email me.

Thanks for reading,

Matt