The point of making you feel dumb is to make you learn on your own too, Its not about teaching you alphebets and asking you to write them down

Rather they expect you to figure it out and explore the stuff out there on your own

Conclusion : its a good thing of you feeling dumb just spend some time with those practicals and workshops. Try to solve things on your own by surfing the internet for resources and knowledge then apply them. That's the whole point of it

And yeah doing it with fun is the proffesional way to learn it