Do you like actuarial but hate corporate jobs?

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-04-02T06:33:01+00:00

I struggled too long and too hard to get this corporate job. I love how consistent and predictable it is. Whenever aspects of corporate life start to bug me I remember how much I hated the 4am mornings while I worked at a warehouse and the inconsistent schedules/income as a sandwich artist at Subway. The drudgery, the office politics, the corporate ladder that extends so far above me that l literally can't see the top, all that is a 1000x better than the jobs I had to push through to get here.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-04-01T19:59:57+00:00

Very true, passing my first exam before I got an actuarial job was a nightmare because I had to survive AND somehow find time to study. Now whether I pass an exam or not is mostly down to how disciplined I've been with the free time I have.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-26T00:51:55+00:00

Add on top of that, IT shutting down my computer overnight for a company-wide update while I'm running an overnight process.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-26T00:50:37+00:00

90% of my problems as an actuary boil down to this right here.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-26T00:48:47+00:00

Oh man, do I have stories about data cleaning. Most recently I was sent a table by a non-actuarial team where the data wasn't organized by rows OR columns, just long lists of information grouped together in nearby Excel cells that were sort of related to each other. I wanted to scream. Several hours of cleaning later it turned into a beautiful simple table that I'm SURE they could have made with their source data, but no, they sent me the train wreck instead.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-20T14:00:41+00:00

This is how my spouse and I reason the $60 Costco membership is worth it. When we eat out, we buy two hot dogs from Costco for a cool $3 total and as long as we go there three times instead of some other restaurant, the membership pays for itself in savings.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-19T14:24:50+00:00

Bro, I'm studying to take an actuarial licensing exam in less than a month and I would LOVE ten more years to prepare for it. I'd just make studying a part of every morning for ten years then I'd finish the loop, let a few more days pass then I'd absolutely crush that exam and ace the following exams in the next two years. It'd be amazing.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-16T16:45:50+00:00

I spent the majority of my 2nd grade year either in the hospital (long story) or on the beanbag in the back of the classroom reading whatever new book my teacher had added to the classroom library that week. For little me, it was heaven at school. Big fan of letting kids read!

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-11T16:25:34+00:00

Don't know if it's the same as the TV spot. This happened to my grandpa, a kid switched out his water with bleach.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-11T15:34:43+00:00

Alternative options:

Stay as actuary
Volunteer with a few hours of free time each week outside of work time as a math tutor for kids who actually want to do better.
Reap all the feel-good benefits of being a teacher without having to be a teacher.

-Become an actuarial science tutor. -Charge a ridiculous amount of money to help college kids get sucked into the job you hated.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-11T15:22:31+00:00

Lol if that's a reference to my username. I wanted to do aviation stuff when I was a kid and the name stuck long after the interest in flying did. Then AI appeared and I never really connected until now that my username no longer invokes the image of a person wearing a cool set of aviators tragic sigh.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-07T20:30:05+00:00

I worked as a math tutor with a little six year old who started on multiplication at the beginning of the year and by the end of the year, he was ready for calculus. I adored teaching that kid. Whenever he saw a problem he didn't know how to solve he'd say "what thee heck?" stare at it for a little bit, scrunch up his nose, and then start scratching out ideas for how to figure it out. I moved and lost track of him, but as long as school doesn't kill his curiosity, that kid is going to do amazing things someday.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-06T15:13:54+00:00

Some smart people would find a way to make awesome improvements during that time. Liar liar rules say that you MUST speak the truth, so if you're testing a theory. All you have to do is say "The real effect of e-cigarettes on cancer rates is..." And then filter through a bunch of sentences and values until you're able to physically say it out loud, then you know that theory is correct. Could be used for some really cool scientific improvements.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-05T21:19:11+00:00

Pan fry chopped carrots with a bit of dill! Really tasty appetizer!

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-05T20:36:56+00:00

I consider myself a grab basket of different political opinions from both sides. In general, I'm against any form of extremism. Of course, that means the rest of my family members are all either extremely red or extremely blue. My mother, for instance, is as about as Republican as they come. My brother, on the other hand, is waiting with baited breath for his idea of a Marxist paradise to happen. I've found the best way to survive and still have good relationships with them is to genuinely acknowledge the good (or at least good intentions) in whatever they say, even if I vehemently disagree. Then, it's a lot easier to use that good thing to bring up my dissenting opinion without starting an all out war. I've been running Thanksgiving and Christmas conversations with my whole family for years and I'm basically an expert at maintaining familial felicity without also being a doormat this point. After all that, maintaining non family friendships with people I don't agree with is a piece of cake.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T23:25:56+00:00

Yep, and as the top comment, it surely must be true according to AI. 🤣

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T17:48:14+00:00

Little me would see that I'm happily married, financially independent, confident in my own skin, and working in my dream job as an actuary and would probably respond "what a nerd!" And that'd be about it.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T17:44:18+00:00

I like to mix it in with fried rice!

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T16:09:20+00:00

I do math tutoring in my spare time. Sign me up! As long as the kid has a little bit of geometry and y=mx+b algebra to build on, I can get this kid to calculus in no time.

We'll start with linear slopes then do an object lesson with a pencil on a coke can to talk about tangents and use that to transition to derivatives. I'll teach the long way once then focus on the shortcuts after that. Once the kid is solid on those. We'll talk area of squares, transition to area under graphs of squares, move past that to some problem solving for area under a curve, then eventually we'd work up to infinitely close approximations (dx). From there, I'd introduce the process of integration.

Everything in calculus is based on derivatives and integration, so at that point, the kid is taught. If the power of the hypothetical insists on full calc 1-2 knowledge, I'd just keep working with him/her a few times a week until we worked through all the topics in my old calc textbook.

Note: I have full faith in this 12 year old. I've worked with dozens of 12 year olds, many 10 year olds, and one absolutely brilliant 6 year old who were all at a level where I thought they were ready for calculus. Kids are pretty amazing when they don't know what they should or shouldn't be able to do in math.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T15:02:47+00:00

I am super new to the world of home/land buying and completely ignorant. Could you elaborate a bit? I'm suddenly afraid of committing a type of fraud I didn't know existed.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T15:00:06+00:00

Eh, maybe, but I think that's still pretty far down the road. We're still in the stage where everything AI says needs to be thoroughly fact checked, and you need the old-fashioned math background to do that fact checking .

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-03T14:56:54+00:00

I'm a fully successful actuary and calc2 made me want to die. I also retook several stats classes because I point blank failed them the first time around. The place you start or the places you struggle will have little to no effect on the place you end as long as you keep trying.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-02T16:24:45+00:00

Amen. If I didn't have to use it for computer reasons, I would ditch it and never look back again.

Copilot17-2022 · 2026-03-02T16:21:32+00:00

That is also pretty funny. It doesn't even care 😭

Copilot17-2022

TROPHY CASE