by Conrad Daley FSA, MAAA

I want to talk about my background about how hard it was for me when I first started the actuarial program at Brigham Young University.

I want to make one thing very clear. I am not special in any way. I was probably the slowest kid in the class. I was not the smartest. I failed multiple classes when I first started at BYU related to actuarial science.

I took pre-algebra and algebra in junior high, calculus in high school, and statistics by the time I graduated. BUT I was not the smartest kid in the room. I just had good teachers and followed the path that was set up.

I spent one year at Weber State University and took Business Statistics, which I did well in. I took it with my brother, and I remember him joking that I was messing up the grading curve. The truth was simple. I just showed up to class, listened, and did the homework. There was nothing special about it.

After serving a two-year LDS mission in Memphis, Tennessee, I came back and got accepted to Brigham Young University because they had an actuarial science program and I was planning to live in Utah. The plan was simple. Go to BYU and become an actuary.

My first semester at BYU was fall 2015, and it went very poorly. I took SAS based programming and applied programming and failed both. I had never programmed before, the language felt old and confusing, and I missed the first two classes because I did not even know where to go on campus. I missed the basics and spent the whole semester trying to catch up before eventually giving up.

That semester, I also took a spreadsheets and business analysis class and got an A, but it was only one credit and very basic. I took a Book of Mormon religion class and got a B minus. I took a bowling class to meet people, which was pass or fail. I bowled over 200 on the first day and then only got worse.

The worst part was my actuarial and statistics classes. I failed analysis of variance because I missed lectures regularly while driving my girlfriend to UVU. I remember going to my professor’s office hours and him telling me honestly that there was nothing I could do except take the failing grade and retake the class. I also took discrete probability, which is related to Exam P, and got a C minus.

Altogether, I took twelve credits and only did well in a one credit spreadsheet class and a half credit bowling class. My GPA that semester was a 1.21. It was bad. Really bad.

The next semester, winter 2016, I met with a counselor at BYU who was also a family friend. I originally wanted a multicultural scholarship, but she told me directly that I was not going to get it. Then she looked at my grades and told me my grades were horrible and that I needed to get them up.

That conversation hurt, but she was right. A true friend tells you the truth. That semester, I changed how I approached school. I took R programming and did well, getting an A and a B plus across the two terms. I got an A in Principles of Finance, an A minus in a religion class, an A in inference, and did well in an actuarial problems study class. My GPA jumped to a 3.86.

From there, things steadily improved. I retook analysis of variance with a different professor and got an A. I took Theory of Interest and got a B. I retook SAS and earned an A and an A minus. I still failed some classes later, including life contingencies, but overall I was no longer spiraling.

At the beginning, I failed multiple classes and had not passed a single actuarial exam. I was not doing well at all. What turned things around was getting a reality check from someone close to me and realizing I needed to change how I was spending my time.

I started focusing on inputs instead of outputs. That meant reading the syllabus, reading the textbook, practicing problems before exams, going to TA hours, and taking practice exams seriously. It meant going to class and going to lecture consistently.

It also meant cutting out distractions. I spent less time with my girlfriend and friends and avoided unproductive study groups where people mostly talked instead of studied. At the end of the day, you take the exam alone. You must study for yourself. That is really all it took. Time, attention, and honesty about what I needed to fix.