Let The Second-Guessing Of The CFA Exam Begin!

One of the frustrating parts of taking the CFA exam is that there's between a 6 and 8 week (depending on which level you took) lag from the time you took the exam to the time you get results. So, there's a lot of time for second-guessing, wild mood swings, and so on. Several of my students and I took the exam at the same test center, and we all shot the breeze over lunch. They were all pretty confident after the morning session. I've already talked to one of them this week (yesterday), and he said that right after the exam, he felt pretty good overall.

Now today, he said he's started the second-guessing. I warned my guys about this, but it's still hard to avoid.

I'm a regular reader of (and sometimes contributor to ) AnalystForum. It seems like the same thing is going on there in the Level 2 forum. It's understandable, since the group there is a pretty open one, with a lot of participation (damn! - I wish I could get a bunch like that in MY classes).

But relax, all. What's done is done, and we'll know the results when we know. If we make it, there'll be plenty of time to start studying for the next level. If not, we'll have plenty of time to start plugging the holes in the current one that we'll have to retake.

But it's still hard to wait.

Ah well. In addition to the exam, I also got two rejections this week. Now I have to patch them up and ship them back out so I can stay compliant with Mungo's Rule (see #5-b). And there's more data to torture for new projects.

To the Bat Cave, Robin!

Another Rejection Letter (Sniff!)

Just got aother rejection from a journal. I'm not all that surprised, because it was a pretty good (I think it was ranked #5 in it's area) journal and it was a stretch to send this piece there. But you never know - sometimes you catch a referee (and editor) in the right frame of mind.

Oh well, this just means we make a few changes and send it back out to another journal. I used to panic about this stuff, but I now know that most papers (if they're decently well done) eventually find a home somewhere.

I felt pretty good a couple of weeks back, since I had five pieces under review. But one of them got accepted (darn!) another came back with a revise-and-resubmit, and this one got rejected. So, I'm no longer "Mungo Compliant" - I fall short of the "three paers under review" standard. So it's time to get the R&R's off my desk and back in an editor's hands.

I have five other projects in various stages (two of them are actually somewhat completed working papers), but until they're submitted to a journal somewhere, they're nothing but vaporware.

So it's back to the academic salt mines...

Another Paper Finished

I made another step toward clearing out my backlog of unfinished papers today. I had a small project that's been in the works for a couple of years. For some reason, it kept getting pushed to the back burner by one coauthor or another (and more often than not, it was me doing the pushing).

This week, we finally said "enough", and we did the necesary work to finish the darn thing. I just finished the "final" rewrite and sent it to my coauthors. All they need to do is check to make sure that the sections I rewrote don't have any serious errors (grammatical or otherwise). So, it should get submitted sometime this week. All in all, it makes for a pretty good start to Spring Break.

And that will bring me up to three papers under review (all submitted this semester). Then I'll be in compliance with Mungo's Rule.

As an aside, the paper that got rejected earlier this week has already been sent out to another journal.

And as a reward, I think I'll check out the matinee showing of The 300 tomorrow.