Inside Track lindA mAllon
As time Goes By
SOmE YEARS AGO, I expended a great deal of
time, talent, and energy for the benefit of my old
school. As a measure of the gratitude felt by the
university, I was invited, along with a number of
others involved in the project, to a trustees meeting
on campus where we would be recognized with an
official pronouncement followed by a nice luncheon.
I hadn’t been back in years. But as I walked across campus on that beautiful late fall day, I was exhilarated. I could
almost imagine I was again that former self who was such a
happy denizen of those august halls and walkways. As I neared
the building where the trustees meeting was taking place, my
nostalgia was thrown into overdrive by the muffled sounds of
chanting and protest. I was in college in the 1970s, and the cadence of dissent and loudspeakers was, for me, as much a part
of that decade’s soundtrack as disco.
“Just like the old days,” I thought. “Some things never change.” It was only as I shoehorned my way around the
massed throng of protesters that it began to dawn on me
that what these students were actually picketing was the
trustees meeting of which I was an honored guest (something to
do with unfair labor practices for graduate students). What had
changed, it seems, was me. I had become (so to speak) “the man.”
Michael Braunstein now serves as both a teacher and an
administrator at his old school (although it’s hard to imagine him ever becoming “the man”). In his article on Page 28,
Braunstein remarks on the evolution in actuarial education
since his own undergraduate days. The growth of actuarial
science programs at the university level has been a boon,
Braunstein says, not only because it gives students a jump on
beginning the exam process but also because it gives them
a clearer picture of the actuarial profession and what it will
take to succeed in it (for starters, hard work and focus). And
then there are the networking advantages, both for recruiters
and for students, in having a critical mass of potential job and
internship candidates in one location.
At the same time, some things about the college experience
remain the same. Braunstein says that his students spontaneously form study groups to help one another puzzle through
particularly troublesome exam problems, much as he did as an
actuarial trainee. And unfazed by any sense of professional hierarchy, they willingly speak their minds on all matter of things.
As Braunstein describes the near-constant intellectual hum in
which he now works, it’s clear that moving from the corporate
campus back to the college campus has rejuvenated him.
This isn’t to say that age doesn’t have its advantages.
Tom Toce, the wily genius behind Contingencies’ popular
cryptic crosswords, credits life experience and actuarial
training for helping him in his recent winning stint on TV’s
“Jeopardy!” game show.
In addition to a vast knowledge base, Toce says in his article
on Page 36, winning at “Jeopardy!” requires good reflexes, quick
recall, mental agility, betting strategy, and poise. Useful habits
honed in studying for actuarial exams helped Toce research
and acquire a broad intellectual portfolio, and risk management
skills developed throughout his actuarial career helped him devise an optimum betting strategy. This served to compensate
for buzzer skills that he admits were, by the standards of his
20-something competitors, somewhat creaky.
Toce enjoyed a good run and did the profession proud. In
addition, he was able to cross one more item off the list of things
he wants to accomplish in his life. Also on his list, by the way,
are winning a Tony award and visiting the moon. If he reaches
either of those goals, it’s on my bucket list to get him to write
about it for Contingencies.
