This isn’t reading the Sunday paper, give yourself some time!  

New Year’s weekend I spent holed up reading through the remainder of module 4 and 5. The good news is that everything is read now and I can begin studying by review, which I find much more enjoyable. One thing that has surprised me continually throughout this studying process is that each chapter inevitably takes more time to read through than I anticipated. I am not a lackluster reader, either. I typically read voraciously and everything I can get my hands on; in my undergraduate years I studied English, if that is an indication of my love of reading. I cannot stress enough: give yourself time to read and comprehend each chapter of each module. It will take time. Modules 4 and 5 took me about 12 hours to read through in full this past weekend. Reading for comprehension will take time.

That being said, I do not recommend this “cram-style” that I am going for right now. I was hopeful to get all of the reading done before my holiday break from school was over, and I did. My retention of the material might not been all that I had hoped by reading through it in this manner. One thing that I noticed right away was there were quite a few questions on the pre-test on module 4. Module 4 is quite a hefty book, with three chapters heavy in information. The payments systems and concentration systems were the biggest struggle for me to wade through. The majority of my struggles deal with verbiage differences between the AFP and what we refer to concepts as in the workplace. It is imperative to learn the AFP language, however, if I want to test well. One piece of advice I received from a co-worker on our ethnography team is to use the language the AFP uses as they are generally quite consistent and want the same definitions that they lay out.

I took the module 4 post test once I finished with the reading. I did not do well on it, 70%, but I am chalking some of that up to distraction; hey, SVU was on and it has been a long day! I noticed right away that there were 83 questions on the quiz. That was the most of any post-module quiz I have taken. This is surely a meaty module that is designed to be paid attention to. I was surprised that there were not more questions related to equations in this module, as well.

Something I certainly would have struggled with had I not studied it in school is the concepts of futures, forwards, swaps and options. I would recommend working toward a thorough understanding of these concepts. I am hopeful that I will soon be able to take the modules 5 and 6 post test, then the pre-test again to understand where I am falling short. I will also be taking the post-test.

As a banker, I realized today I get banker’s hours and have MLK Jr. Day off. Since I have a dream of finishing this test with a passing grade, I just earned myself a free study/review day!