Imagine this: you walk into your first tutorial. The first question you must answer is, where do you sit? Next to the cool-looking person you spotted? Or do you sit alone in the corner and wait for them to approach you? Do you engage in small talk with anyone? Or do you simply ignore everyone, because that is not the purpose of a tutorial?
Pov: The tutor is trying to get you to say 3 interesting facts about yourself
By the time you’ve made these decisions, you hear the tutor asking if you’ve done the reading and prepared for the tutorial.
Either you panic. You’ve spent the past few weeks going to all these random cortex events (or encountered Maastricht’s dark night life), and did not even know you had to prepare. Honestly, you’re just here to climb your way up the social hierarchy. You’re too busy looking into which sorority offers the most free beer on their welcome evening, and thinking about whether your tank top is too much or just enough cleavage (no judgement, we all do this at times) Or… you’re thoroughly prepared. You’ve been frantically checking Canvas weeks in advance to make sure you don’t miss a thing, because you’re an unhealthy perfectionist who will burn out in your thirties, at whatever high demanding job you thought you needed to make you happy.
This might be an aggressive description, but if you’re honest with yourself, you know there is some truth to it. That is why we are here to offer you some advice drawn from our own experiences (best taken with a pinch of salt).
To the under prepared:
Speak anyways.
Sure, you may not even know what the topic that week is, but don’t let that be an obstacle to your participation. Ask the questions, even if they seem stupid. Communicate your doubts. Most likely, the answer to the questions you have will also benefit others, either because they did not know the answer, or because thinking and remembering the answer will consolidate their learning. No one has good reason to judge a humble king/queen/non-binary monarch. If they do, it stems from their own insecurity, and you should just heavily side-eye them. If somehow, no one has done the reading or has the answer to your question, don’t spend the time staring at each other sitting around in uncomfortable silence. Try to use it productively. If everyone seems a bit lost, don’t be afraid to ask the tutor for some extra guidance, unless they also turn out to be clueless (not to point anyone out). In that case, pull up the slides, look on Google and find the answers to the learning goals in real time. Remember, it is not an exam, so don’t be worried about “cheating”.
Finally, to the people who, in general, consider tutorials a futile waste of precious time and see no use in them:
There is probably little we can say to convince you that the tutorial in itself is beneficial, but you do have to attend them. So either way, you are stuck sitting in a horribly lit room for some time, unless you wanna risk failing due to lack of attendance. This is highly inadvisable, and causes a lot of excess stress, since you will have to write several plaguing emails to the school board begging for mercy (not worth it from own experiences). Sure, you could also spend the time brainrotting in front of your computer, but that always comes with that icky feeling in the back of your mind, knowing you are postponing the work to “ another time” that rarely arrives. Try studying something else, or contemplate your inability to focus and look for methods to get your uncooperative brain to enjoy doing boring tasks (Ophélie is on her 17th dopamine detox, and Annika may or may not be micro-dosing).
To the prepared:
Sometimes, having everything ready can also be nerve wracking. You’ve read all of these chapters and papers, seen all of these videos explaining the concepts, and you want to make sure you get it right, say the ‘smart’ thing. Honestly, if you have hours of preparation behind you, and a weirdly eloquent vocabulary to show it off, go ahead diva, don’t let social anxiety get in the way of sharing what you learned (even if you’re not sure it’s accurate).
However, you might be one of the rare people who consider themselves a gift to humanity. This is most likely not as true as you want it to be. And yet, you still roll in the tutorial with a confidence overdose and disdain for all of those who did not have the time to do the reading, or worse yet, asked ChatGPT to answer the learning goals. Maybe ask yourself after you’ve lectured the whole class and looked down on the tutor for not knowing the answer to your niche question; why are you really doing it? And did your peers gain anything from your constant blathering? Both of us have approached tutorials with some sort of performance mindset, feeling like it must be some way of flaunting what you know, but at the end of the day, it’s about learning. Share your insight, but make sure others understand what you say, and if they have something to add, hear them out, as they might know more than you think.
There is something that we need to clarify: there is a clear distinction between an arrogant display of knowledge, and just pure, unrequited, passionate rambling (if you somehow can link the discussion to the cerebral cortex of orcas, go for it), and don’t let anyone shoot you down if this is your case.
Going into your next tutorial after having read this, we hope you at least gained some new insights, and fresh perspectives. It is no secret that the PBL system is far from perfect, and it can definitely be headache-inducing at times, especially since Brain Science is one of the programs with a high mandatory attendance rate.
Notwithstanding the system’s flaws, we have found it an enjoyable and interactive way of learning. The class of 2027 in Brain Science has really become a close-knit group of diverse people, and the time we were forced to spend in various tutorial rooms has certainly contributed to that. We both remember feeling super lost in our first few tutorials, as most people do. PBL is something that takes time to adapt to, and hopefully these tips can provide you some comfort in the process. To cut short, tutorials are meant to benefit you, so try to make the most out of them.
Now with all these tips you will conquer the next tutorial 🙂