Tutorial advice arrives fast. It arrives while you are defending the drawing it is about, which is the worst moment anybody has ever picked to listen properly. Then it goes, and it goes quietly enough that you do not notice it going.
01What happens in the twenty minutes after
A tutorial is rarely one piece of advice. It is three or four, delivered as one continuous sentence with the joins invisible. “I think the section’s the problem, the entrance doesn’t read from the street, and have you looked at Lacaton and Vassal.” That is two instructions and a reading suggestion in nine seconds, while you were deciding whether you agreed with the first.
Then you leave, and the second thing happens. Somebody asks how it went. You give them the summary — “he wasn’t sure about the section” — and from that moment the summary is the memory. The other points are gone in a way that feels like they were never said.
None of this is a memory problem. You were doing two jobs at once and only one of them was listening.
02The three-column note
Rule the page into three columns. What they said · What I’ll change · Why. That is the method, and there is nothing else to it.
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Rule the page before you go in
Three columns, headed, the night before. Not in the doorway, and not on the back of the drawing you are about to discuss.
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During, fill column one only
Short phrases, in their words rather than yours. “Section is the problem.” You are not writing a transcript and you are not writing your defence.
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Fill columns two and three within ten minutes
Standing up, in the corridor, before the next conversation starts. Column two is what you will change. Column three is why. Ten minutes is the outside limit, and two is better.
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Read it back and mark the gaps
Any line where you cannot fill column three gets a circle round it. That circle is next week’s first question, and writing it down is what makes you ask it.
The third column is the one that matters. A change you cannot explain is a change you will undo in week nine, at midnight, when you are tired and the old version suddenly looks better. If the why is written down, that argument is already settled.
The third column is also the one that becomes text. “The entrance moved to the north side because the approach from the station arrives at that corner” is not a note — it is the caption under the drawing, written in October by the only person who knew the answer. That kind of sentence is what assessment criteria are asking for when they use a word like development.
Filling column two also forces a question that is easy to skip. Was that an instruction, or was the tutor thinking out loud? Someone turning an idea over in their head and someone telling you the scheme does not work can sound almost identical, and the difference decides your next fortnight. Ask. “Is that something you’d want to see next week, or were you thinking out loud?” It is a normal question.
03When to write it, and whether to record
Notes taken during a tutorial are tidier and worse. The price of writing is not listening, and you cannot pay it in the ten seconds when the useful thing is said. A two-minute dump straight afterwards beats a neat transcript bought with the conversation. Immediately means immediately: the corridor, not after lunch.
| What you use | Good for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Notes during | Numbers, names, references — anything you would get wrong from memory. | You stop listening to write, and you write down the point you already understood rather than the one you did not. |
| A two-minute dump after | Everything else. Order, tone, what they pressed on, the thing said on the way out. | It has to happen in the corridor. Ten minutes later you have compressed it into one sentence for a friend. |
| A voice recording | Fast tutorials, and tutors who talk in paragraphs. You hear the caveat you missed. | Ask first, and some will say no. A forty-minute file nobody plays back is not a note — it is a forty-minute file. |
| A photo of the marked-up drawing | Anything they drew on. An arrow on a plan carries more than a sentence describing one. | It records the where and never the why. Useless on its own in three weeks. |
Be careful with the last row: a photo feels like a complete record and is not. Take it, then write the sentence that goes with it. An unexplained photo is an undated sketchbook page, which is check 11 on the same list — marks nobody can read are not evidence.
On recording, ask first, in plain words: “Do you mind if I record this so I can write it up afterwards.” Some tutors will say no. That is a normal answer, not a judgement on you — they may be about to discuss somebody else’s work. If it is no, you take notes. If it is yes, still do the two-minute dump: a recording is a safety net, not a note.
A tutorial you did not write down is a tutorial you paid for and did not take. The failure is not your memory. You were busy defending a drawing while the useful half was being said.
04Read last week’s notes before this week’s tutorial
Five minutes, before you walk in. Two things come out of it. You find the point you agreed to and then forgot. And you arrive able to say what you changed and why, which is the cheapest good impression available to a student — a tutor noticing you acted on what they said.
Over a term the third column becomes the story of the project, in order and dated. Read top to bottom in December, it is the text that goes under the drawings, and it cost no extra work because you wrote it in the corridor eleven times. Pouring that into a document is what the InDesign portfolio template is being built for.
In practice
In a group tutorial or a crit you spend most of the session listening to feedback on other people’s work, and the instinct is to switch off until your turn. Do the opposite and write theirs down too. Tutors work through a set of concerns, and the thing said to the person before you — about scale, about the ground floor, about the absence of a section — is usually the thing you were about to need. Same three columns, their name at the top. You are in that room for far longer than you are the subject of it.
Rule three columns on a page tonight, before the next tutorial, and fill the third one in the corridor while the conversation is still in your head. That column is the part of a tutorial that survives to December. This is the last of the twelve habits, and the checklist is the one page that holds all of them together.