President's Blog Mar 2022

Busy, active and thoroughly engaged

Hello and welcome dear readers to the President’s blog post for March 2022!

*Exhale* What a month. I usually try and summarise all of ASSOC’s work in these posts, but we were so busy that I’ll have to unfortunately leave things out. Some fun facts to note though: the Committee doubled in size with our most recent intake (wow), we’ve got loads of collaborations with other societies in the works and merchandise is on the way! But enough preamble, let’s get on with it.

Meet and Greet

To get the show started, we held our annual Meet and Greet for 1st year Actuarial students. Many presenters were able to talk about upcoming opportunities, the attendees got to participate in fun networking games and Buddy groups were able to get together for the first time.

The team had expected a modest turnout, given the tumultuous past two years. But what we got on the day far exceeded our expectations, with around 70% of the 1st year cohort making an appearance. What a staggering number – I wonder whether the free catering at the end had anything to do with it…

But nevertheless, even if they had come for the free food, they certainly got a lot more than they were expecting. Human Bingo had everyone up on their feet and mingling with each other to find the weird and quirky facts designated on their sheets. Silent Line-up had people madly gesticulating to one another, burdened by the singular rule of no verbal communication – so yes, very entertaining stuff to watch

PwC Welcoming Lunch

PwC Welcoming Lunch was the first sponsored networking session of the year, with representatives taking time out of their busy schedules to mingle with students from all years. The conversations ran throughout the entire two hours (I’m still not sure how the PwC reps didn’t lose their voices afterwards).

Everyone was able to walk away with more insight into the industry: 1st years were able to gain exposure to professional Actuaries for the first time, 2nd years were able to consolidate their current knowledge of theory to professional practices and 3rd/4th years shamelessly asked for tips on the Vacationer and Graduate program applications (guilty).

Pleasantly, the momentum from Meet and Greet carried over, with massive student turnout that blew the team away! We had luckily allocated extra budget for the catering beforehand… after three years of studying statistics, I think I’m starting to sense a correlation between food and attendance.

Careers Fair

One of our major events of the year has to be Careers Fair. Held early in the year, it provides the opportunity for students to connect with industry professionals from all the top actuarial employers in Australia. Coincidentally, it’s also timed during the application season for most of the top actuarial employers in Australia. So, I’m sure you can see why this might be a pretty popular event.

With that being said, the attendance still blew me away. Despite COVID rearing its head through a large group of second years, the attendance figures still filled the room – so much so that it had our Careers team nervously second guessing our catering capacity. And yes, at the expense of your eye-rolling, I will keep up this running joke by pointing out this bizarre relationship between catering and attendance. I can’t possibly imagine what that’s about…

Through it all, our team was incredibly professional in making all our sponsors feel accommodated and all our guests feel enthralled.

A massive thanks has to go to our Careers director Matthew Aung and Project Manager Edwin Ni. An equal amount of thanks has to go to all of our wonderful sponsor representatives for making the trip to MQ and taking time to answer all of the endless questions our attendees had.

Future Events?

Event	Timeframe
ASOC X ASSOC Buddy/Mentoring Picnic	Week 5/6
Games Night	Week 6
Bouldering	Week 6/7
Excel Workshop	Week 7/Recess
Orientation Camp	Week 7/Recess
Surprise Sport Event	Week 8