In 2013, I responded to an ad on our beloved ACOPA discussion board to volunteer for the EA2-L Exam Writer’s committee. For those who don’t know, EA2-L is what I like to call the “everything but the funding law” exam. It is an incredible way to remain sharp on topics that you might see day-to-day in the course of your work. From nondiscrimination testing to PBGC premiums to multi-employer plan rules (oh my!), serving on the committee helps ensure that you keep your pension knowledge current. At least it has for me.
Spoiler alert: I was not accepted to the committee that year I volunteered – some lucky actuary had beaten me to the volunteering punch – but like any astute co-chair, the committee’s co-chairs remembered me and in 2014 they snapped me up to join the writer’s committee.
I have enjoyed the opportunity to write questions for students working toward their Enrolled Actuary designation. My philosophy has been to write challenging questions and to try to create inventive ways of asking a question that’s been asked many times. It’s a significant balancing act to manage your own work responsibilities with writing exam questions, but committee members take their tasks very seriously, and I certainly took my role as a writer seriously.
I’ve always admired the co-chairs who have led the writing committee. They are noble souls, wrangling actuaries from the large and small plan universe. The co-chairs ensure that the writers adhere to guidelines for writing and formatting questions, and more importantly, ensure that the writers cover all of the required topics and deliver (on time) the EA2-L exam questions to the Joint Board Advisory Committee on Examinations. The Advisory Committee oversees all Enrolled Actuary exams.
This past year, I volunteered to serve as co-chair of the EA2-L writer’s committee. Each co-chair serves for a 4-year term with 2 overlapping years with a fellow co-chair. My current co-chair will serve the last year of his 4-year term while I get to enjoy the second year of mine. Not quite in the honeymoon phase any longer, but closer to feeling like I know enough to handle working with a new co-chair next year (my third year).
As co-chair, I’m no longer responsible for writing questions, which is counter to my original objective for joining the committee. Since I see almost all of the questions that our committee writes, I am still maintaining my knowledge on the broad range of topics. The co-chair is a heavily administrative role – planning meetings, setting deadlines, managing deadlines, challenging writers to refine wording of questions, serving as a resource for the Advisory Committee when they review the EA2-L questions, and so on. When I was a writer, I thought all of my work happened during the spring when I wrote questions. As a co-chair, I see now that the life cycle for writing a given year’s exam questions and seeing them through from start to finish takes a nearly 18 months.
The heaviest lifting as co-chair happens during the summer writer’s meeting where all questions are reviewed by the entire committee. Some questions get through this peer review process very easily, while other questions generate lively debates; through it all, the co-chair must stay focused on the mission of writing the best possible exam question for an actuarial student.
If outsiders knew how much attention we place on semicolons and paragraph spacing, they might be amused, but when you are combining the efforts of multiple writers into a single cohesive and consistent-looking exam, you realize that one of your most important roles as co-chair is to massage the great work that the writers do into something that gets us one step closer to the finished product for an actuarial student on exam day.
I’m enjoying my role as co-chair. I think it’s helped me know more about the writers who serve on the committee as well as teaching me the bigger picture of how an exam goes from inception to exam day.
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