How good is it when you’re in a tute, and there’s always someone who is all over the readings, answering the questions, and getting a HUGE amount of back pain from carrying the rest of you through the class?

Well, get ready for me to blow your mind – that COULD be you! You can be that person who everyone else looks to in awe, who always has highlighted readings (in! different! colours!) and who knows when everything is due. Here’s how.

#1 Take A Breath And Speak Up 

It can be terrifying to answer a question in a room full of adult strangers who you don’t know. But, c’mon, can you seriously tell me what the worst thing that could happen if you answer a question, out loud? Here is a list of things that could go wrong:

• You could get the answer wrong: cool, everyone will forget in 30 seconds and no one in their right mind will think you’re stupid. In fact, I can guarantee it, as approximately 65 per cent of the class wasn’t even listening.
• Coincidentally, the fire alarm goes off while you are talking, and everyone has to be evacuated – nobody associates this with you and no one thinks you are stupid.
• You open your mouth, and promptly throw up everywhere. Everyone feels terrible because it turns out that you have really bad food poisoning. No one thinks that you are stupid.
• Do you see my point? 

#2 Do Your Damn Readings, It Won’t Kill You

Trust me, I know that it feels like you’ll die if you have to read another 50 pages of discourse about statistics/if time is real/how cells are made. But when you come in tomorrow to your 9am, and your teacher starts talking in depth about any one of those topics, you can feel safer knowing that you will definitely have an answer if you’re randomly called. You don’t have to sit there having some kind of heart attack every time their eyes sweep over where you’re frantically reading over some downloaded PDFs.

#3 Make A Friend And Allocate Your Study

If you’re going to give this uni thing a go, it’s important that you make some connections with the people around you – after all, you are heading into the workplace together (eventually).

So, the best way to do that is find someone to complain about the workload with, and divide it between you. If you have a stack of readings, you can negotiate which ones you should do, even allocate page numbers, and then each go off and write some dot points, summaries and notes, and come back together to share your answers.

#4 Know When Your Stuff Is Due

This one is almost too easy – keep on top of your due dates. This will alleviate roughly 100000 per cent of your uni-associated worries. If you know the dates that you need to submit things, you can actively work towards these timeframes and feel like you have room to breathe. Write it all down in a diary, or even on the sticky notes app on your computer, so that you can always have it nearby.

#5 Keep In Contact With Your Tutors 

How CRAZY – your teachers actually want to help you! I know you probably don’t want to bother them, but they do get paid the big $$ to get professionally bothered. If you have questions, and you think they are too small or not important enough – shoot the tutor an email. They are there for a reason.

That being said, don’t send them Buzzfeed quizzes or anything like that. Not speaking from experience, just, um… don’t.

Now: are you ready to be that person who has completely mastered the art of the tutorial?

(Lead image: Germanna CC/Flickr CC)