May 15th, 2026
Today, I had my final class with a student I had taught for the past eleven months. As the lesson came to a close, a warm feeling swelled in my throat, and a torrent of feelings overwhelmed me—the fulfillment of having shared my knowledge with someone else, the gratitude for having mentored an extraordinary student, and the ache that comes when you devote hours upon hours to pulling out the best from someone, only to realize the time has come for them to go. It has been about two years since I began tutoring seriously, and through teaching over 130 students across SAT and AP subjects, I have had the privilege of working with extraordinary students like him. These individuals would cover in two weeks what would take others two months, grasp concepts with unprecedented depth, and remain humble and open throughout. In this article, I want to share eleven principles I have noticed were shared among this high-achieving group, in the hope that more students may become exceptional learners themselves. The Eleven Principles 1. The absence of a ceiling. Extraordinary individuals do not learn with the consciousness of a boundary in mind. They believe that regardless of intelligence quotient, circumstances, or current skill, they can improve continuously as long as they make the effort. The common person sets limits before they even begin, and settles for less. The extraordinary person does not see those limits, nor cares for them. Once they find a field of interest, they fixate on becoming the very best at it. They draw no boundary between themselves and the best in the field, and believe they too can grow to that level. 2. The highest standards for themselves. A slight lack of understanding is unforgivable. An error in reasoning must be scrutinized. The extraordinary individual commits to fully understanding any concept or question, no matter how challenging, and mobilizes every resource accessible to sharpen their understanding to perfection. 3. An open and humble personality. Arrogance is one of the greatest blocks to learning. The extraordinary person knows they are high-achieving, but rarely makes an effort to display it—because they know that the moment they succumb to ego, further learning becomes nearly impossible. While remaining grounded in their core principles and strong individuality, they keep themselves open to new ideas that can help them to further improve. 4. Following the path of highest resistance. The universe tends toward disorder; learning runs against that current. Building knowledge means forcing scattered neurons into ordered connections, and that takes deliberate energy. Once the exceptional learner identifies a skill they are weakest at, they construct a drill to sharpen it relentlessly. Where the average person avoids uncomfortable areas, extraordinary learners treasure them as brimming with opportunity, and concentrate their effort to catalyze what would otherwise never happen on its own. 5. Efficiency. Once you're willing to do hard things, you must protect the time to do them. For the extraordinary, the lively matters of daily life—getting ready in the morning, transport—are executed with rapidness to free time for what truly matters. Once they sit down to their craft, they give it their full, undivided attention. And even then, they continue to seek methods that let them learn at greater speeds, to reap the most from their focus. 6. The flexibility to adopt avant-garde technologies. Many people distrust AI—avoiding it in the belief that it will replace their learning, or exploiting its features to complete tasks without actually understanding them. Extraordinary people garner its full benefits by relentlessly asking well-thought questions to learn from a near-equivalent of world-class experts in every possible field. 7. Taking ownership of their own education. Schooling is delivered as a one-size-fits-all model—necessarily so, because educating a large population has historically required a set curriculum. However, such a generalized approach cannot replicate the effectiveness of a tailored and personal one. Extraordinary learners do not depend on the standard curriculum. They take full ownership of their learning, and find the method that works best for them—relying on school when the instruction is strong, supplementing when it is not. The principal driver of their growth is always themselves. 8. Finding other extraordinary people. Extraordinary people are drawn to other extraordinary people. They look for those who care about the inherent value of a subject, not just the letter grade attached to it, and they actively pursue environments where learning is treated as something more than a requirement to advance in society—where people truly love to learn. 9. Seeking advice selectively. Conventional wisdom—especially in cultures shaped by Confucian deference—suggests we should listen to our elders without question. The extraordinary learner, however, views advice through a lens of meritocracy rather than hierarchy. They understand that experience is not the same as expertise. While they remain humble, they are incredibly selective about whose map they follow. They look for skin in the game—individuals who have achieved exactly what they aspire to achieve—and absorb their hard-won insight. To the extraordinary, the quality of the source dictates the value of the signal. 10. Self-care. The extraordinary person sleeps as much as they require to perform at maximum efficiency. Unless a crucial deadline is approaching, they rarely cut their sleep to get more work done—they know that in the long term, the cost of sleep deprivation weighs far more. Most of the highest-performing students I know sleep around seven hours a night. The extraordinary person also engages in some form of exercise. While many dismiss it as a time-hog that distracts from education, extraordinary individuals know that to tame the mind, one must first tame the body. By distancing themselves from their work temporarily, they return to it more capable than before. 11. Love. The extraordinary person forms a relationship with their craft. Through the countless hours of devotion—through the long stretches of wrestling with challenging concepts to the moments of ‘eureka’—they come to know all the curves and contours of the subject. Craft, to them, is like a deeply personal companion. They come to know it the way one comes to know another person. ===== The student I taught my final class with today possessed many of these traits. He committed himself with an intensity I rarely see, refused to settle for partial understanding, and treated his weakest areas as the most valuable ground to cover. Watching him blossom over eleven months was the closest thing I know to witnessing the path to becoming extraordinary. While this may sound extreme, I truly believe that everyone is a genius, and I believe that embodying these principles above will help enlighten that virtuoso within you. I hope that this article has been of some help to you. Thank you for reading.
With gratitude to Sigil Wen, whose ideas have inspired this essay, and my students and their parents, for entrusting me with their lead and investing their valuable time in learning from me.