matthewjf2

[matthewjf2]

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Hi Sophie, thanks for your response. I will try and explain the events leading up to Saturday briefly, and the exam itself.

I had two weeks off work. I started the mocks to my schedule one month in advance, and made sure to go through atleast 10-12 mocks twice over and was feeling confident about my scores. Everything was going to plan and I was getting 70-75’s consistently. I felt good and had a confident mindset at this stage. Things however took a turn for the worst on Wesnesday of the final week when my mood, behaviour and mindset completely changed. I started having problems sleeping and nightmares about failing and what would happen. I couldn’t bring myself to do anymore revision and started feeling depressed. I can’t explain why this happened I have no answers as to why this happened only questions. I progressively got worse every day onwards at that point.

So now we arrive at Friday the night before the exam, ad my brain is going into some crazed overdrive where I am thinking at 1,000 mph about everything from random CFA formulas, potential scenarios of what I need to do If I fail, and I’m lying in bed tossing and turning trying to sleep – reading numerous blogs on my phone about how to sleep with anxiety, and eventually at 1am I get up and go on a 3 mile run to try and tire myself out so I sleep lol.

I get to the exam and by this point my brain is exhausted, however I try and stay as focussed as possible given the circumstances. Time management wasn’t an issue, but for the life of me I couldn’t function normally. I felt physically and mentally drained and just couldn’t muster up any mental power to answer the questions properly, which meant I second guessed around 80-85% of the paper.

Trust me guys and girls when I say I did the preparation. Two weeks before the exam I had all the topics nailed, could recite pretty much all the main formulas from memory, all the differences between IFRS and GAAP, and practiced all the “chug and plug” questions in the syllabus/Schweser books!
Apologies for the TLDR description, but once the results come out on January 22nd and show that I fail again – I need to try and explain this to an employer why I can’t pass CFA Level 1 when all my graduate peers have…

It makes me angry because I genuinely don’t find the material difficult. It’s basic economics, high school math type questions and easy bond and equity stuff. I should be absolutely nailing all of this tbh! ARRGGH!!!

I’m going to see a GP later today, but yea any advice would be great.

🙂

[matthewjf2]

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Well I spoke to the GP who was very helpful. She said she has seen this before when she was at med school, and will perscribe me meds (chill the f*** out drug) for the two weeks leading up to the next exam, and she also said If I fail I should sign up and re-take ASAP 😛

Aparently it shouldn’t effect memory retention or cause drowsiness If taken in the correct dosage. So maybe I can try it out.

I do want the charter, but for now I’m just going to chill over Christmas and stop thinking about it! 🙂

[matthewjf2]

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OK so I got a Band 10 fail…..

[matthewjf2]

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I work in Credit Risk Management at an AM, but my goal is to go into Credit/Equity Research 🙂

[matthewjf2]

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I still need to finish unit 2 of the IMC (exam July 2nd) – then crack on with L1. I’ve skimmed through most of it, and looks pretty straight forward, but my god there is alot!

I recognise a good 40-50% of the topics though from either work, uni or the IMC. Personally I think 4.5-5 months would be optimally efficient study period.

I’ve been chatting to alot of people at work who did L1 last year and they said 4 months should be enough :0

[matthewjf2]

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Given that two of my flat mates are M&A bankers (Analysts) – I really don’t know how you managed to complete a CFA on top of this. I’m working in AM, and I’m complaining I don’t have enough time to study!!! Where the hell did you find the time to sleep!?!?!! 😐

[matthewjf2]

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I thought a group might be a good idea say once a month to bounce questions off each other. I always found at University it helped better my understanding If I could confidently talk about a concept in a conversation. I seem to remember conversations far better than just reading a size 6 font sentence in a hideously big text book. 😛

[matthewjf2]

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Also it helps to “share the burden” of study. I also get cabin fever locking myself away in a room on my own. xD

[matthewjf2]

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June 2013 = Band 1
Dec 2013 = Band 10

= one very confused person. =[

[matthewjf2]

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The word on the street is Schweser for everything apart from FRA, Ethics and Econ.

[matthewjf2]

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Oh I wasn’t implying that group study is bad and I did my fair share while I was studying in university. I just find it strange that even though I graduated with a specialist in finance and every other fellow program graduate is also aspiring towards a CFA designation I just can’t fathom why we never did group study (even if we were studying in the same library!).

Zee, hopefully I can find enough people. Let’s see how this thread develops!

Antonio, where in London are you?

[matthewjf2]

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Indeed. I’m not sure what to do now. I might sign up for Dec 2014, but I need to relax for a few months before I can put myself through this hell again! x)

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