.
Screw ECO - i guessed that in L1. I hated that reading and took a gamble that it wouldn’t make up too much of hte exam and i could guess a couple of answers.
Dude - you’re not alone. This is part of the reason why CFA is hard - it’s the burn out. Ppl get all bogged down and go crazy with the breadth and depth of work.
FRA is a big part of L1, so there is no chance you can skip it entirely. Doesn’t mean you can’t change thing up though - try knocking out derivs or another topic and coming back to FRA.
You got a study timetable / plan? I remember doing L1 and put together a spreadsheet detailing plan over 3 months and i tracked progress each week to see how i was fairing. It gave me an end in sight.
Not many options out there - you just gotta man up and get ur head down and crack on. Go somewhere quiet and study for 6-8hrs on a Sat and Sunday and couple of hrs a night. It’s hard dude - but everyone is in the same position as you. That’s why we have this community here so we can all bit c h and moan about how hard it is… and how we’re getting CFA tattood on our diks when pass that thing.
If you think Level I is overwhelming, just wait until Level II (or Level III).
#NowManUp
Falling down is the #1 cause of death among the elderly; it should not be taken lightly.
Anyway, you want words of wisdom? If you want to work in finance, you’re competing with hordes of people who will not be burned out by light effort and who will work 10x harder than you, from what it sounds like. If you can’t get through this test, you might want to question if the overall career path is for you.
Don’t worry about a few of the other responses - everyone has moments of burnout and feelings of distress at some point. The fact that you have stayed hours after work studying and working prep questions shows that this is an area you are passionate about. Congratulations, by the way, on getting started studying so early. I would hardly study at all until about 3-4 months before the exam, and then wouldn’t intensely study until the final month and a half.
Don’t worry about the past except to learn from it. You have already missed the last couple weeks and are behind on your old study schedule. No use worrying about spilled milk. Time to redo the study schedule and focus on the task ahead. You scored band 6 last year - are you studying in the same way?
I think your current study system might be the cause of your burnout. It sounds to me like you are going too slow. Spending all of December on Quant and January-February on Eco is borderline ridiculous to me. I would burn out too! Especially if I found one of those subjects boring! I would speed way up if I were you and try to get through all the remaining material in the next month (by early-mid April). Why? Because you don’t really need mastery of specifics until the final weeks before the exam. For now, just get the concepts of each section down. If something is boring or extremely confusing at the moment, do a cursory reading and then, move on! I found that my first time through the material, the majority of it would be very confusing to me. If I moved on and got a very basic grasp of all the general concepts that would be tested, I would be much more comfortable the second and third times through. Many times it would take me 3-4 tries at a subject before I had an “aha” moment and truly understood. Also, sometimes something else in the curriculum would help me with a previous area of confusion. If you find a certain section just repeatedly confusing, you may need to find someone here or on youtube who can help explain it differently. If it still doesn’t make sense, you may just need to accept that area of weakness come test day.
Another suggestion - don’t be afraid to bounce around the curriculum after your first read through. If you find financial reporting or fixed income boring, don’t try to force yourself to spend weeks at a time on them (it sounds like that’s what you put yourself through with economics). Make a list of all the study sessions from Schweser, and then decide how many days you need to spend on each. You will have a good idea of the areas you need help on after an initial reading of all the material. When I took level 1, there were 18 total study sessions. So I might spend three days in a row on study session 17: Derivatives and then the next two days on study session 13: Market Organization and Structure. I would never do more than three days in a row on the same study session - that way I don’t get bored or bogged down on the same issues.
Final tips: Don’t study ethics in October!! It is so boring and most of it is just memorizing. I would save all of ethics for the final two weeks if I were you. Also, leave the last week before the exam open on your calendar. Then when you get to that week, decide how many hours you need to spend on each study session and study like crazy. I would make sure to get 9 hours a day of studying each day for the final week until the day before the exam. The day before the exam I was never able mentally to get myself to study - I would just want to get the darn test over with. 9 hours a day times 6 is 54 hours. If you normally need 300 hours of study to pass, then that is almost 1/5th of your total study time in the last week. That means all that information will be fresh on test day.
You got this! Don’t give up or question yourself! Just retool and refuel.
Sounds like you need life alert
+1 this. Man up son.
Everyone studies and works. That’s how 90% of us got it. Try having kids/family and doing this too.
OP, dude don’t worry about the exam man…CFA is all about perseverance…You stick to your study schedule religiously then you will pass. The exams never ask you to solve for unsolved math problems or prove how black holes have enough energy to bend light…Don’t hype yourself out of it…Look CFA exams are 3 MC questions with around 43% pass rates for each exam…Simply put, among all those test takers, roughly half of you will pass…Ain’t that hard…All the questions are from the book…Plow through the books and take the mock exams and re study the sections you’ve missed on the mock.
Same with L2 and L3, the material is not tough…it’s just more stuff especially with L2 compared with the amount of stuff on L1. CFA is about putting in quality hours…If you put in quality hours then you will pass…Unlike the GMAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, or even the IQ test, CFA does not give out a score, it is merely pass or fail and unlike GMAT or IQ and other exams, IT IS studyable.
As my college coach told us many times, “there is no such thing as burned-out…you’re just weak!!! You say you’re burned out and need a break…that right there…you just lost half the battle junior!!”
hahahahaha classic!
Haha old people are so helpless, lolol.
And just keep getting back up. We’ve worked with clients retaking for 3-4-5 times. Then they pass and life goes on.
The worst story so far is the 35 y.o. analyst who took 8 years to get through; his kids didn’t know anything of dad in the spring. They freaked when he started showing up for little league. And he got promoted and a big raise.
Ditto the overwhelmed advice – it hits almost everyone about halfway through. The past seems not near enough accomplished and the distance to exam not near enough time to complete.
Good luck! With 5 weeks to go there’s still plenty of time if you’ve completed readings…