To share or not to share

When it comes to exam time, something inevitably demands your attention, and your best-laid study plans have to be adapted to new situations. Families are especially careful about what they do and don’t say in the weeks approaching the exam. In some cases, the old adage, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong," seems particularly apt. Here are two examples of whether to share or not to share before an exam.

Jonathan Mark Wilson, CFA

Milano, Italy
Charterholder since 2004

I took my Level I exam in the summer of 2002 after marrying Rita the December before. Not being good at understanding women, I decided to tell my wife about the CFA Program and the implications of this after the honeymoon. This had us come down to earth from cloud 9 very quickly.

I took the week before the exam off and was feeling nervous, wishing that I’d taken the whole month off to prepare. For the last two nights before the exam my wife, claiming she had a cold and stomach ache, suggested that she sleep in the living room so I didn’t catch her illness. I was thinking, "Oh dear, relationship problems after having no social life for the previous six months."

On exam day, I went to kiss my wife goodbye but she didn’t kiss me (worried that I might catch her cold?). Instead, she wished me luck.

After the exam I did my usual estimate of whether I’d passed by assigning high and low probabilities to each subject area and calculating an average. I figured I was borderline.

I met my wife at the station and just before getting on the train she held me back a few paces from our friends. I was so exhausted and thought, "Oh dear, here it comes. She’s been waiting to give me some bad news."

She said, "Mark, I’m pregnant and you’re going to be a Dad." She had known for three weeks and kept it secret all that time. It was an amazing experience to finish the exam, be so exhausted and find out I was to be a father for the first time.

James was born in January, and I amazingly passed the exam. Rita always said that I really went to the CFA Program to get out of changing our kid’s nappies. Well, after changing a few, perhaps she was right, but only in part.

Elizabeth Dhillon, CFA

Carras, Washington
Charterholder since 2003

My CFA Level 1 Exam story is a love story…Friday was finally here. It was the day before the Level I exam in 2001. By this time, I had done all the studying I could – if it wasn’t in my brain by now, I wasn’t going to master it in the next 24 hours. I went to work (and reviewed all day) and came home, looking forward to a night of relaxation. My goal that evening was to get a good night’s rest, which seemed impossible, given how nervous I was about the next day’s test.

After a nice home-cooked meal with my boyfriend, I got ready for bed. As I was reading, my boyfriend’s pager, which he had lost earlier in the day, started to buzz. Happy that it had been found, I reached down and found it – attached to a wooden box. As I slowly picked up the pager/box, my heart started racing. I instantly understood what was happening – he was going to propose! I was sort of expecting it, but thought he might do it the next night. I never once thought he would do it THE NIGHT BEFORE THE CFA EXAM!

I opened the box, and there was a beautiful engagement ring. My boyfriend then asked me to marry him. "Yes, of course!" I said. I was laughing and crying…so happy! I called my parents and my girlfriends to tell them. And then I had to go to bed. Ha! I don’t think I slept a wink that night.

On the morning of the exam, I felt prepared, but my mind had already started to wander off into wedding land. All I remember of that exam is that I frequently would sit there and stare at my engagement ring. I had to repeatedly tell myself to focus on the test and not daydream! Fortunately, I passed the exam that day.

To this day, my now husband is teased by my friends and colleagues about proposing to me on one of the most stressful nights of my life.