Parents seek for their children "something other" than what they usually expect them to acquire through the regular school program, and they turn to extracurricular activities and out-of-school experiences to find it. Teachers know that each student brings to a learning task a something other--certain attributes that affect how the student responds to the challenge. In this paper, the "something other" is the constellation of four personal competencies--cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and social/emotional--and the learning habits that flow from them.