>I was an SOA Associate from 1991-2000 (I stopped paying the $400 annual dues this year and I lost my Associate title). I am pretty good in math and I found the exams to be easy (but not fair to everyone because they tested what you knew, not what you understood).

My memory is that they were just about the toughest exams I ever took, the exams I emerged from feeling the "sweatiest" & "stupidest" in my entire life - even my PHD graduate professors did not know the solutions to some of the questions on, for example, the first calculus exam, without lengthy analysis. Doesn't mean I didn't do well - I was in the top 10% on each. But I was accustomed to graduate math/stat exams which were virtually all theoretical essay-type proofs when I took the actuarials, which are quite different, as you know.

>I worked as an actuary for about half a year before I realize it was too boring for me. I switched to the computer field because it allows me to face different challenges depending on what I want to do for a period of time. I tend to switch environments every few years because I hate solving the same problems every day. I just love it when I am in a position where I don;t know the answer and I am in heaven if I'm face an NP-complete problem < vbg >. It imposes some restrictions in my career development (I will never become an executive) but I am much happier this way.

My feelings too. Caught myself just before fully committing to the actuary path (where earning power/job security was the big motivation), and changed directions into the new (back then) computer/applied-statistics programming field (back then it was all on the mainframe, much less fun, and of questionable earning power - but I could feel the future direction was right). Never regretted the choice.