Pathway Prep
I watched Super Bowl Sunday the way I watch most football — half paying attention, half thinking about the students I have that week. But something about Patrick Mahomes that game stuck with me, and it wasn't a highlight-reel throw.
It was how unremarkable most of his good plays looked. Short completions. Throwaways when nothing was there. Checking down instead of forcing a heroic play. Excellence, up close, doesn't look like magic. It looks like someone doing the obvious, correct thing over and over, without skipping it because it's boring.
There's a term for this in sociology: the mundanity of excellence. Researchers who studied elite swimmers found that what separated Olympic-level athletes from very good ones wasn't more talent or more dramatic breakthroughs — it was that the elite athletes treated the small, unglamorous parts of practice as seriously as the big moments. Turns, breathing technique, warm-up routines. Nothing special was happening. It was just happening correctly, every time.
I see the same pattern with ACT students. The kids who make the biggest jumps aren't usually the ones with some flash of insight that unlocks everything. They're the ones who do the boring stuff consistently: they read the instructions, they check their bubble sheet against the question number, they don't skip the "easy" review step because it feels beneath them.
What this means for your student
If your student is chasing a big score jump, resist the urge to look for the one trick that will do it. There usually isn't one. What actually moves scores is unglamorous repetition of fundamentals — done correctly, every single time, until it's boring. That's not a lesser path to excellence. According to the research, it's usually the only one.