 I'm just thinking about myself and apparently saying that it affects all of the millennials and it's this thing called the quarter life crisis and Eric, I'm not sure if you've heard about this thing that's plaguing our generation but the whole idea is that our generation has never had more choices and we almost have paralysis by analysis because there's so many different things that we could do I mean once you finish studying actual science you can imagine I've been so goal driven up until 2017 it was like complete all of the exams once you finish and you write the fellowship exam and it's done it's kind of like okay what do I do now? Do I work for a corporate? Do I work for a startup? Do I do my own thing? Am I a consultant? Do I want to work in Cape Town or Joberg or overseas somewhere? There's so many different things that I could do that you look at what I kind of did in 2018 it was kind of like I just was like uh you know what what do I do now and it's only it took me like a bit of a whole year to figure out where I actually want to go. Of course not everybody has the luxury of taking a year off to figure out what they want to do so what type of career advice could you give to the upcoming atreus? So very interestingly Michael from from my more advanced years I would say that a year is such a short period of time and I know people kind of freak out when they think about not having set income and being a permanent employee or knowing where they're going next but I've been in those situations more than once now and yes it's a little bit scary it definitely is but worrying when you get to the end of a contract or you know or better start figuring out what I'm going to do next but in the end these things have a way of working out and most of us do kind of have a safety net to fall back on hopefully but of course you can always decide to do something that you don't plan to do in the long term like take a position at a big corporate who's firstly as Kiera mentioned it gives you the opportunity to get that inside the knowledge which you really do need if you want to go on your own and it gives you time to think about what you want to do next now depending on where you are in your actuarial exams whether you've done or whether you're still busy you might have more time than than others to do that and to explore but to be honest most insurers and most companies nowadays expect their employees to kind of have a little bit of a side hustle at most times and a lot of people encourage having a side hustle I was at an insurance industry event not too long ago where one of the big talks was around having a side hustle which was really interesting you wouldn't really have expected that at an insurance institute gathering but there you go I think the the scales are falling off big companies eyes now around allowing that kind of freedom what do you mean by by a side hustle like can you give us a few examples of what you mean by that well some of the things that I have done in the past is but to be honest with you most of this work now is pro bono so I don't get paid for this on top of my day job but I have in the past because of the experience that I've built up in the contacts that I've made I have been asked to advise young companies and young entrepreneurs wanting to enter the insurance space around how to approaching insurance companies maybe making some connections for them and also reading through their documentation having a look at their proposals whether it's for to present to a partner whether to present to a potential investor because I've had that exposure before many of them have asked me for a little bit of advice on top of that some of the other things I've gotten involved with has revolved around doing some UX UI testing for people that have started new companies now having nothing to do with insurance but just needing a little bit of insight into how a user would experience the interface and interestingly enough that does give you more ideas on how to approach your own day job it's it's interesting how having these different hobbies and these different things that you're involved in enriches your life at work so so Kiora having heard that what type of side hustles do you think you and other actuarial students could possibly look forward to doing in the future uh well firstly like now I've only just started to like apply for jobs so because I mean it's around that time but I think once you like there maybe you could start like especially for me I'm like looking more to go in towards data science so like I think maybe doing pro bono things with data science because I mean there's so much to learn and I feel like if you're not constantly keeping up with the programming and keeping up with the latest technology you're going to really fall behind so I think it only benefits you if you have this side hustle if you could call it where you go and you help other people with things that they need something that obviously doesn't take you too much time and if it does then you get paid for it but I think yeah it only benefits you if you are constantly keeping up with your skills and making sure that they are exactly where they need to be at