the cfa with no experience

so i'm signed up for the CFA Level 1 for June 2010 and i have no financial background. i have a BA in English and Modern Languages and a Masters in Economic History. The latter gave me an understanding of basic economics but other than that i've been working in web development for the decade since college. I've run web design agencies and taught web development at a local college. i did badly in math in high school and avoided it as much as possible during college. i haven't really touched math in ten years aside from basic algebra for programming. Now i have a job working for a large bank and i thought the CFA would be a good way to fast forward my investment knowledge. i looks like a very rough road ahead for me for this exam and i'm sure i am not alone so these are my thoughts.


being a teacher, i've found the best way to learn is to teach it because you must know it cold. these posts are intended (at this point) to be my way of explaining the material to myself. who knows, maybe someone will learn the way i do or maybe someone who is better at this than i am might correct my mistakes. Either way, it will selfishly help me cement some concepts.

Process: Took me a while to find my method. What i've found is that I do the following:

1. I read the reading on investopedia to get a little more user friendly (and short) version of what I am going to read
2. I read the chapter in Schweser
3. Any problems, I do a search on the term or concept or watch a YouTube video on the subject or read the version in the CFAI text
4. I make some notes along the way
5. I do the problem sets at the end of the chapter in Schweser (and try to do the CFAI ones but they tend to be incredibly long... but i recommend them as they really test you)
6. Write down the problems I had doing the questions
7. Write up my notes on this blog