I remember once interviewing a fellow who spoke of “creeping credentialism” and its dangers in – if I remember right – the teaching profession. Basically, he was concerned that people were involved in an educational arms race in which they would pile up degrees, certificates and designations and then be able to stick new items on their resumes and letters behind their names which would get them an edge in job applications and for promotions.
Funny, I thought at the time, that this fellow had a Ph.D. – which is a complicated string of letters, capitalizations and periods – yet was warning others against getting other sets of letters to put behind their names. Ahhhhhhh, I thought cynically, he’s trying to keep his edge! If everyone gets some fancy-schmansy letters behind their names, he’ll seem less special.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
I don’t know if my cynical thinking was warranted – probably not – but it encouraged my determination to also sometime get some letters to stick behind my name and also seem special. (And perhaps to actually be special – to study, perchance to dream.) The Master of Arts I earned back in 1991 isn’t used that way, so I couldn’t use that. No one puts “MA” behind their name. But for more than a decade I’ve been taking courses through the Canadian Securities Institute, which is the educational organization run by the Canadian investment industry, and I realized early on in that process that if I did a pile of them in the area that I deal with on a daily basis – and passed them – I’d be able to apply for the Derivatives Market Specialist designation. So that incentive of future initialization keep me going through a lot of very early mornings of study over the years – something made increasingly difficult with the newborn babies that keep appearing in our house every year and a half or so.
Well, with a big “Whew!!!” I discovered last week that I’d finally done it, and I’d achieved my DMS designation. I passed my last exam in Commodities as Investment, and that fulfilled the requirements for the DMS, and the CSI approved my application for the DMS.
So, now I’ve got the letters, what do I do with them? I joked to my markets editor, D’arce McMillan (who had humorously wondered what I was doing getting education from Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) authorities) that most of my Dungeons and Dragons-playing friends from high school would assume I had become a Dungeon Master Superspectacular, and that would probably make them think I was cooler than if they knew it was a financial industry designation.
I’m not into tattoos, but perhaps I’ll have DMS embroidered onto my pajamas, or underwear. Or perhaps put them on a business card. Apparently DMS used in conjunction with a name CANNOT include periods, such as “D.M.S.”, and has to follow the name, not precede it. If you break that rule you’ll probably end up a cellmate of Conrad Black or Bernie Madoff. But you won’t have the pricey legal team they’ve got trying to get them out. So you’d better not do it.
I have been extremely cynical – I hope in a humorous way, as it is intended – about this subject to this point of this post, but allow me to be serious and sappy for a moment. I started taking CSI courses and working towards the DMS years ago because I wanted to develop some expertise in commodity market analysis, and not be like a deer caught in the headlights when interviewing analysts about grown-up commodity market issues. I wanted to be able to understand the bigger issues – which, like now in the ag markets, are often the most important issues – and I knew that wouldn’t just come through the day to day work of ag market reporting. And I think – regardless of the DMS designation – it worked. I’m now pretty confident talking to leading minds on commodity market issues and certainly don’t feel like a complete dummy now, which was often the case in the past. I now feel like a semi-dummy, which is better. At least I’m understanding the terms they’re using. And I’m able to understand why they’re talking about certain inter-market issues.
This afternoon I’m hoping to interview one of the world’s leading analysts of financial, commodity and agricultural markets about why bond prices and agricultural commodities recently rallied together, why they have since diverged, and what we can read into that. And I want to know about this in the context of gold versus the CRB index versus oil versus the DJIA in the light of what we saw in 2008. I don’t think I would have dared tackle that kind of an interview back in 1998, when I started my path towards the DMS. But I think this is a crucial issue for ag markets, so I’m glad I can do it.
So, initials and credentials can be phoney-baloney. They can be irrelevant. Or they can be worthwhile and meaningful. For me, the DMS was worth it not just for achieving some letters I could stick behind my name, but also for the fact that it forced me to understand commodity and derivatives markets from gold to natural gas to corn to bonds to equity indexes, and to be able to understand issues of convergence and calendar spreads and various forms of risk. Since it’s directly relevant to the work I do here, if I find it hard to be too cynical about it.
So, society and some industries may occasionally suffer from creeping credentialism, but I voted on this issue years ago with my time and energy, and so if I’m part of the creep, so be it. Just call me “Creep!” I’ve been called worse. And occasionally better.
