The Actuarial Science in Kenya

When I first heard the word Acturial Science, i was flummoxed. Not because of the complexity of the word, but as a pitiful endurance to the person who had introduced it to me. My heart literally bled for him, for i was sure he had slipped his tongue, or what lisping can adequately be meant. Perhaps he had meant Architectural Science, if ever there is such coarse, or Actual Science or whatever sensible lingual statement that deemed appropriate to thine ears.

Sitting in the back row of my high school hall-for it had to be the last row, as i was a chronic back-bencher- i let my ears take in and take in again the queer phrase, apparently aware that the Careers Day host speaker actually meant what he was saying. A very young course-very, he had emphasized-had been introduced in Kenya higher institutions of learning, and-he emphasized again- it had propensity to make you earn gazillions of money after graduation.

If there be a dream that i oft had endured since childhood, it has to be the dream of earning big in future. The art of comfortably rubbing shoulders with who-is-who in monetary status, sampling the finest of wines while oozing pompous laughter at every stereotype joke i come across. Riding Porsches and Ferraries around the posh suburbs of Lavington and Muthaiga, accessing vulgar medical insurance and contributing my erudition to prime magazines, journals and television interviews.

With the possibility of making such dream become a reality, i enrolled in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, JKUAT, to undertake the coveted course with chutzpah. Actuarial is a complicated jargon of mathematics, finance and gambling course, just as its name sounds. Like a man with a vision, i comfortably chewed the excesses of bulky notes, heavy metallic books and hours of boring but interesting lecturer(er)s.

The first year was all above-average, not until some facts started cropping with astonishing reality. Beneath the veneer of awesome-ness lies an ugly truth about this all-glorious course. Allow me to divulge some:

1. Actuarial Science can gladly fuck you.  It is the only course i know that has a capability of staring you deep in your eyes...and show you the middle finger. Just like that. Just like that.
2. It is far, far easier  for a camel, no scratch that, for an elephant to go through an eye of a needle than for one to be an Actuary. Because after four years of pious labor in getting an honor, the institution can happily announce you an Actuarial Science graduate, not an Actuary as you had hoped, which has the same marketability status with B Com or Purchasing and Supplies students, if not less. This is because you need to do at least certain amount of professional papers to be considered employ-able. To the papers...

3. Kenyan Varsities Actuarial Courses are not recognizable internationally. Shocked? So, after everything you have done, after all the swotting, you are required to commence afresh with the papers. The various professional papers are Canadian Institute of Actuaries, Institute and faculty of Actuaries, Institute of Actuaries of Australia and American Actuarial Society. And these papers, my dear friends, are not just any kind of papers. It is irritating, embarrassing even, that you can cover every nook and cranny of one paper, say Financial Mathematics or Probability and Statistics, fill your head with each and every detail there can be about it day and night literally, only to horribly and abysmally fail the exam. The psychological trauma that a victim undergoes through is un-fathomable.

In places far and wide (read America and Europe), students through with post-diploma can be allowed exemption of up to five professional papers, making one to fruitfully enjoy his/ her hardwork. TASK-The Actuarial Society of Kenya-an umbrella with responsibility of ensuring all these woes Acturial students facing are dispensed with have proved to be incompetent, and unfortunately moribund.

So with my hopes dwindling as graduation looms ahead, i can only hope that no child of a woman will be subjected to these inconveniences of mental torture. If only for one second i had a career speaker of a seer, a person adequate with explanations and truth of what one would expect if he joins the course, the hustles of professional papers and eventual insomnia attack, i would have dutifully applied a worthier and substantive course.

I am not regretting, and whimpering 'I wish I knew' verbiage, but only expostulating the price of blindly desires. If it will help anyone one day.