What's your excuse?

Here are a couple of real life stories I came across from people I met over the last few weeks about studying for the actuarial exams:

1. I met a lady at the exam seminar last week and she inspired me.

She has 3 kids. Since her husband is in graduate school, she's the sole breadwinner.

When I asked her how she managed to pass her exams on every of her first try. She said, "I wake up every day at 4am to study."

2. My manager was cleaning up his office the other day. And he showed me his dog-eared copy of study manual of Course 8. In front of the manual, it was a picture of his two kids. And he said, "that's my motivation to pass my exam."

3. This one is not actuarial exam related but I thought it's worth sharing. There's a 50 year-old lady came to my friend for math tutoring lessons. This lady has tried dozens of math tutors over the years and she's still failing in her math courses in a community college.

Her husband insisted her to stop taking math tutoring lessons as he thought it's a waste of time and money. She persists as her dream is to get a college degree. Guess how she manages to finish her homework given by my friend? She tries to finish her math problem in her car every day before she goes home. She even hides her homework at the back of the trunk so her husband won't discover it!

Over the last few days, I was at an exam seminar in Ritz Carlton. While sitting in a ballroom, looking up the gigantic chandelier and sipping the cookies n creme gelato shake I got across the street, I feel I'm very priveleged to have all these resources for me to prepare for the exam.

This also makes me think- if others can pass the exam with lesser resources and time than I have, what's my excuse for not studying?