In the weeks to follow, it seems like a lot of juniors’ attention is devoted to the upcoming, state-sponsored ACT date. Regardless of what extracurricular activities they engage in: baseball, softball, FFA, band, you name it. And upperclassmen on the academic teams are swamped with requests for aid, be it with coursework or for the ACT.
“It seems a little weird that people ask for aid left and right. I knew there just wasn’t a whole lot of people who could help, and so much demand for it... Could you do this for me, please?” Pablo asks Audrey before class begins. “To help the football team with the ACT...”
“Nadine told me about how some peeps on the football team deemed you a poor fit. And... her, too. I wonder what makes me different from you two to their eyes” Audrey asks him.
“To be fair, it’s only a subgroup of juniors on the football team that deemed us poor fits. Ethan, Finn, Dayton and Valter. However, Heath and Orson are the ones who asked you for help on the ACT, and me, too. And, surprisingly, one of the cornerbacks, fed up with how the outgoing quarterback was of no use, would rather have had Nadine helping him study than the outgoing QB!”
The football team might have its pick of tutors, but the people they can call upon can’t always be there for them. Not the least because football players don’t always ask for help fast enough, Pablo reflects on why it has come to this. Simply put, footballers must compete with non-football players to get tutoring services, and must make do with online help until then.
“After quiz bowl practice, does that work for you?” Audrey asks Pablo.
“Yes” Pablo then responds to the request placed by the right linebacker.
After quiz bowl practice, Pablo warns his parents as the couple gets to Heath’s home. Orson is also there, awaiting the arrival of the pair. After they ring the doorbell:
“Finally! You’re our only hope!” Heath sighs of relief.
“I’m Audrey and you probably know me as either a quiz bowler or Pablo’s girlfriend. Before we begin, we would like to know what work was done before, on your own or with others!” Audrey starts the session.
“The funny thing is that, if we stick to online help, it might tell us why an answer is incorrect, but it doesn’t seem to apply from a question to another” Orson retorts.
“By now, you know that, on the ACT, leaving questions blank is a no-go. However, how you go around eliminating the answer choices depends on the type of question considered. In math, you can plug answers into equations” Pablo tells his other teammates.
“Also, if you realize you always get a certain type of question wrong, you might want to review the material associated with it!” Audrey explains to the duet.
“That’s the problem, Audrey; we seem to get things wrong at random!” Heath remarks.
“We seem to need help across the board!” Orson confides in them.
To Audrey’s eyes, it shows these two have been using free online tools to study, which often include disjointed sets of questions and solutions to each, but no more than that. No real tracking of one’s evolution in studying.
More like they are unable to discern patterns, if any, in their mistakes, and I feel like Heath is making up excuses, Audrey starts thinking about their study habits.
“It pains me to admit it, but sometimes shortcuts are necessary. In math and science sections, if a diagram or chart is available, a clue can often be found in it, which will enable you to eliminate at least one answer” Audrey gives out the first clue that’s applicable widely.
“There are times where I felt like I was almost running out of time. Do you have any tips that could help in reading?” Orson asks them.
“What has worked for me is reading the first and last paragraphs, as well as the first and last sentences of each body paragraph” Pablo explains to the two footballers as Orson beams with gratitude. “If necessary, you can always go back to the passage when faced with a details kind of question!”
“Remember: you don’t have much time here. So for the first drill, we will time you and, if the time you take to answer exceeds the target, then we will give you some pointers!” Audrey readies a set of math questions for Heath.
Pablo helped me cheat in Algebra II, which is why I’m willing to ask him for help, even though some of my teammates have reservations, Heath ruminates as the two are assigned different sets of questions: Audrey gives him some sample math questions, while Pablo gives Orson a passage with reading questions.
The two start the drill, and boy is it painful for both footballers to get down to applying what they were told to do just a few moments ago. Much like getting hit by either one in a football game. And the tutors also attempt to answer the same questions as their tutees.
And it’s obvious their tutors finish the questions in the drills they gave the juniors faster than the juniors could complete it. They both finish their set of five questions at least a minute faster than Heath and Orson did. Which leads them to keep an eye on the clock after they are done answering their questions. And it appears the two juniors are cutting it close, very close.
“Now, it seems like building up speed, but the reading passage picked for the drill was about life as a scholarship athlete in college! A passage that was susceptible to get the interest of the tutees” Pablo then hands off the passage to Audrey, hoping that it will shed some light on just how intense Division I hoops can get.
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“You might be tempted, in reading passages, to look at the questions before reading, especially when the questions point at a specific part of a passage. However, the main risk is that you might misread a passage or a question, and then get a question wrong!” Audrey adds.
And then the second drill begins. As Audrey starts reading the passage, she realizes that… ouch. I harbor no illusions of ever playing at any level higher than college hoops. I wonder if Heather is aware of the demands of D1 basketball on an athlete’s schedule? Even more so in the Ivy League, where the academic schedule can crush even non-athletes? And if I actually became good enough to play basketball in the Ivy League, I might have some interest from, like, Berkeley, Villanova, Georgetown or Notre Dame even! Or even plain old Tulane… I wonder if Heather obsesses with getting me to play in the Ivy League based only on my grades and how I played in the state tournament! Audrey starts crying.
“Honey, why are you crying?” Pablo asks her after she’s done reading the passage.
“It’s now that I realize that, even if I became good enough for any kind of college hoops, playing basketball in college might prevent me from getting what I really want out of college!” Audrey keeps crying.
“Just give this passage to your teammates, and I will give it to mine! I understand that, as smart as you are, it’s common not to know what you want to do in life at this stage” Pablo then emails the passage to all juniors on the football team. “It’s normal to want to keep options open, I am sure other quiz bowlers want that, too. I made peace with not playing football in college, and, honestly, while some people might need to rely on sports to go to college, college sports aren’t what they’re cracked up to be”
Meanwhile, it seems like Heath is a little shaken, too, but not as much as Audrey. Not the least because, like Pablo, he accepts readily that he doesn’t stand a chance in college football.
“What’s going on here?” Orson asks the two, at the end of the math drill.
“These tricks might have been helpful to us, since we got four correct answers on each drill, but as I said earlier, we need help across the board. Do you have any tricks for the English section?” Heath asks the two.
“The correct answer will usually flow best. However, there will be times where no change will really be the best answer...” Pablo answers his teammates.
And, of course, how would one approach each type of question in each section of the ACT might be helpful. Audrey seems to take a bit to clear her mind:
“If you realize that, for instance, you made mistakes more often in geometry, then it might be worth reviewing geometry!” Audrey seems to notice that Orson got more geometry questions wrong, notwithstanding there were only 2 geometry questions in the drill.
“What about stuff such as exponentials and logarithms?” Heath asks.
“That you might want to look up these things online. We might even do it together!” Pablo offers the two juniors.
“And all other pre-calculus stuff on the ACT! Now I know what I need most to work on!” Audrey has a flash in her mind.
And probably the case for Nadine, too, as I do myself. None of us are mathletes, nor do we push the envelope in math, Pablo realizes that almost everyone not taking pre-calculus would have had at least one question wrong on pre-calculus. He then looks up what pre-calculus topics would come up in the test.
It turns out there just isn’t a whole lot of pre-calculus on the ACT other than exponentials and logarithms. More like just not a whole lot of it at all. The only other pre-calculus topic that may come up is trigonometry.
And so the foursome start looking for resources to self-teach these two topics, which they then forward to their sports teammates. And Nadine, too.
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Speaking of Nadine, she breaks the news to that cornerback, Richard. About the material the regular Algebra II won’t cover in time for the state-sponsored ACT administration.
“Well, Richard, are you ok with not getting a perfect math score? If not, my teammates told me there is material on the ACT we won’t cover in time in class!” Nadine tells him, a little perplexed.
“Oh?” Richard gasps, upon learning of how some material for the ACT came too late in Algebra II for it. “I might be ok with not getting a perfect math score, but I am going to need every little thing I can get until then, so please, teach me about these things!”
Nadine starts by showing an introductory video about, first, exponentials and logarithms, as well as a common real-world application: composite interest. It’s now that I wonder how this course is designed… trig, exponentials and logarithms are the things that can vary among districts, states even, in when they’re covered, Nadine ponders.
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Back at Heath’s home, Heath’s dad is thrown off by the two sophomores preparing a video about exponentials and logarithms, and feels like something is not right.
“I wonder if that’s a good idea. I mean, they can’t sniff even a twenty-seven, and I think they might not need it either!” Heath’s dad looks at the pre-calculus questions they are using to learn trigonometry for the ACT, referring to both Heath and Orson.
“Dad, you seem to be implying that TOPS is the only real incentive we have to score high on the ACT!” Heath retorts to his father. “There’s a reason why I was forced to ask these two for help: the other tutors couldn’t be everywhere at once! None of these tutors want us to just hit the TOPS threshold appropriate for our grades!”
The cold, hard truth is that there just aren’t a whole lot of tutors to go around, Heath thinks, while he’s reminded of how online tutoring just isn’t the same as in-person tutoring. Of who juniors called upon to get help: the tutors disproportionately come from the top 10% of upperclassmen.
“As relevant to the ACT, trigonometry and exponentials are going to be very basic. No trig functions, no inverse functions” Pablo skims a FAQ about pre-calculus on the ACT.
“I’m sorry, but it’s not strictly true. Logarithms can be seen as the inverse functions of exponentials” Heath’s mom retorts.
“Do you want your kid to improve on the ACT?” Audrey asks Heath’s parents.
“That’s what I am paying you two for!” Heath’s father yells at them.
The two juniors are then treated, like Richard by Nadine elsewhere in town, to a lecture about composite interest and how exponentials are used. And about their key properties.
And then the foursome attempts to solve questions from past ACTs on exponentials and logarithms. The limited supply of questions on these topics make their lives a little harder than they would have liked.
“On the one hand, you want your kid to improve on the ACT. On the other, you want your kid to only hit the TOPS Opportunity threshold!” Orson whines to Heath’s dad.
“You must realize that, even though TOPS Tech and Opportunity pay out the same amount, TOPS Tech is restricted to vocational training, while TOPS Opportunity is broader in scope!” Heath’s mother warns the attendees, before handing out a link to a comparison chart between the four TOPS tiers.
Now I understand why Heather obsessed with scoring a 27 or better on the real test, or why it seemed like everyone wanted a 20, 23 or 27. And it seemed pretty telling of what GPA range kids fall into based on their stated ACT targets. I guess we’re told about TOPS only in junior year... a bulb flashes in Audrey’s mind, before collecting $80, of which $40 is given to Pablo.