How to survive and even excel in tutorials without really trying. (594 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.33 on 6 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Iago (View user info) at 2004-11-11 17:36:22 EST
Tutorials are, of course, the lifeblood of university learning, where tutor and student sit, sometimes for up to two hours, once a week, in an atmosphere of mutual mistrust and silent paranoia. The tutor's job being half-heartedly try to illicit any response to the subject matter that made up the reading list you lost two days ago, while your job is to respond with some degree of understanding.
Ghastly as it can be, but these aren't like lecturers: they can fail you for not turning up. Attendance may be the minimum requirement to keep you off the vice-chancellor's list (plus one essay a term), but this tirade is not about scraping by. It's about excelling at scraping by. Here's how it's done.
The Rules:
1.) Arrive on time. Latecomers are always treated as an annoyance and will undoubtedly be made an instant target for questioning from the tutor. If you do arrive late, make a brief apology and then wade straight into debate with forthright opinions for about five minutes. It will then let you off the hook for your bad timekeeping and give you brownie points for breaking the sea of silence that is the first five minutes of any tutorial. And it uses up time. Regard this ALWAYS as your real job in any tutorial.
2.) Always talk, and it doesn't really matter what about. Everybody loves a good conversationalist, and no one will be more relieved than your tutor to get away from the tedious matter at hand. Has an interesting event happened in the news?
Your tutor will have an opinion. Has he/she recently had some work published that they'd like to share with you? Your tutor will, no doubt, be delighted to discuss it. Imagine yourself to be a courtier and your tutor as your ruler: say what will please them, and give them the opportunity of hearing what is, to them, the sweetest sound of all; their own voice. If you play the part of the mirror; reflect back a flattering insight into your tutors insight and learning, and then all will be well. Do not, however, be a sycophant. Occasionally put up a spirited defence against your tutors opinions, as long as it uses up time. If the actual subject of the tutorial starts to loom into the horizon, it is your duty to wade in with some alarming new opinion on a trivial matter to get things back on track. Dare to be controversial; 'eyebrows should be taxed,' 'all Mexicans are gay,' 'compulsory shaving for all Welsh,' it doesn't matter! Keep the conversation alive. It's only the minutes that count!
3.) Steer the debate. When all tactics have been exhausted, there will be a portion of most tutorials that will end up on the subject of the tutorial. It's a sad but unavoidable fact. But you are armed. It is a common and pitifully obvious tactic for the under-prepared student to "slipstream" in a debate. For example; the tutor posits a question, or point of debate. There is a pause. The mature student makes a nervous, fumbling but well-informed answer that illustrates a whole area of further discussion. The inexperienced know-nothings will then eagerly jump on this bandwagon and ride it until their own lack of knowledge leaves it wheel-less five minutes later. Wait. Wait until you see the whites of their eyes, my friend. Then drop your bomb. Having looked serious and sage all through this early flurry of debate, as silence falls once again like a shroud on the room and the tutor wearily draws breath to start the whole process over afresh, come in with your bombshell. Say something like "I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, but one thing that struck me immediately about this text was what F.R. Leavis called 'the tragic inevitable effect of personal desire on wider society'. Does anyone agree?' The tutor will immedatly respond with the gratitude of a drowning man. At last! Someone who has bothered to do the reading! He will be doubly impressed as this was the quote around which he originally built most od his doctorate thesis, and you will know this because the mature student blurted this out twenty minutes earlier in the coffee bar. The others will, or course, now desperately jump into the debate and fill it up for twenty minutes, which is exactly what you want. But it is too late for them; their trump has been played by you, and the brownie points are safe in your grasp.
You need not speak again.
N.B. These rules only work, as far as I know, for the Arts and Humanities.
Science students and the like will have to find different tactics, but then that's really your fault for trying to study something that will make you employable.
User Reviews
Submitted by The_Cyst_Master (user info) at 2006-03-10 13:14:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
WINNER! http://www.ubersite.com/m/84913
Submitted by Ka (user info) at 2004-11-28 07:09:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh man, working at uni is a hideous thought.
Submitted by Stabkill (user info) at 2004-11-28 05:15:31 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Lying sack of shit stealing material bastard.
Submitted by InkyFingers (user info) at 2004-11-12 11:44:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Tutorials are all about being prepared before you arrive. Preparation will give you the confidence you need to overcome the anti-study: people who show up to waste everyone's time with shitty jokes. Preparation=confidence=beat the fuck out of the anti-study. Just don't spatter blood on you expensive textbooks or you wont be able to sell them back to the bookstore.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2004-11-11 20:06:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sadly in physics tutorials they try and make you do nasty worky stuff.
We got round it by trying to get the tutor to tell us dirty jokes, lend us money, expound on his theories of women (so that I could argue), or explain something to us the we actually understood so that we could doze.
One of the other students did bribe me into wearing a particularly low-cut top one day so that I could distract the tutor whilst he slipped his late coursework into his briefcase. It worked.
There were one or two occasions when we all went down the pub before the tutor got there and said that we'd been told it was cancelled. They were the best.
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2004-11-11 19:25:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ah yes, tutorials. The bane of my life. Especially problematic when all of your tutors are unbelievably hot female postgrad types, and you spend half the tutorial staring and drooling. It's a hard life.