CFA continuation and Self-Improvement

The next day after I signed up for the CFA test, I started to be a lil panic... From my conversation with another coworker who is going to take the test as well :

"WHAT?? CFA test is 6 hours??? Are you kidding me???"
"It's Multiple choice right???? Thank god!"
"Where on earth is the test center?"
"Whyy oh why do I know so little about this and still sign up"

I'm really only thinking of doing the level 1 and not going through the next level 2 and 3. Firstly, I'm not intending to go into finance after my graduation from MBA. Secondly, I'm only doing CFA because I need a closure to my working life.

My group leader who wrote me a letter of recommendations to B Schools told me that my weaknesses are my lack of quantitative skills in the fixed income industry as well as my public speaking ability. I never had any finance class in my undergraduate and I didn't know anything about fixed income instruments when I went in for my job. The only access I had to this knowledge is the Fixed Income Handbook by Fabozzi, given to me on my first day. My first task was to read some chapters out of it and grasp the gist out of the book. Never being able to study from a textbook ( always prefer listening to someone explaining to me), unsurprisingly I gain v little knowledge about the Mortgage Backed securities as well as the Asset Backed Securities.

SO : to make sure that my experience working in this company is not futile, I've decided to take the CFA level 1.

Now, to improve on my public speaking ability, my co- worker introduced me to Toastmaster.

Basically you meet about once or twice a week for two hours with a group of 10-20 people and during the meeting, you need to do presentation. I think almost everyone gets to speak up during the meeting..

Went once last week and it was really interesting. I definitely think that I can improve my public speaking ability by joining this club...

More on that when I go to the next meeting