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Useless Students

Grumpy Old Lemons Like You
wheypat
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Useless Students

#281059

Postby wheypat » January 30th, 2020, 9:02 am

My students asked me to go round and change a light bulb. Fair enough, the flat has high ceilings and they don't have ladders. So I pick up a 100 watt equivalent bulb, the ladders and I go round at the appointed time, my student lets me in and takes me to her bedroom. She asks why the ladders? So I can reach the bulb I reply. OK, she says in a strange voice. It's the bulb in her desk lamp that's broken.

I weep for the future.

Howyoudoin
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Re: Useless Students

#281061

Postby Howyoudoin » January 30th, 2020, 9:10 am

wheypat wrote:My students asked me to go round and change a light bulb. Fair enough, the flat has high ceilings and they don't have ladders. So I pick up a 100 watt equivalent bulb, the ladders and I go round at the appointed time, my student lets me in and takes me to her bedroom. She asks why the ladders? So I can reach the bulb I reply. OK, she says in a strange voice. It's the bulb in her desk lamp that's broken.

I weep for the future.


Do you think it's the fact that they don't know how to do it or they expect you to pay for/do this kind of stuff every time it happens?

How did the conversation go? (For our amusement!)

HYD

wheypat
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Re: Useless Students

#281063

Postby wheypat » January 30th, 2020, 9:14 am

Howyoudoin wrote:
wheypat wrote:My students asked me to go round and change a light bulb. Fair enough, the flat has high ceilings and they don't have ladders. So I pick up a 100 watt equivalent bulb, the ladders and I go round at the appointed time, my student lets me in and takes me to her bedroom. She asks why the ladders? So I can reach the bulb I reply. OK, she says in a strange voice. It's the bulb in her desk lamp that's broken.

I weep for the future.


Do you think it's the fact that they don't know how to do it or they expect you to pay for/do this kind of stuff every time it happens?

How did the conversation go? (For our amusement!)

HYD


It went on the lines of I'll do it this once, but next time I'll charge you £40 to change a lightbulb. I then showed her how to unscrew a light bulb and replace it. She was a bit surprised at my attitude. And she'll be blinded by the 100 watt bulb in a desk lamp.

Howyoudoin
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Re: Useless Students

#281078

Postby Howyoudoin » January 30th, 2020, 9:57 am

wheypat wrote:
Howyoudoin wrote:
wheypat wrote:My students asked me to go round and change a light bulb. Fair enough, the flat has high ceilings and they don't have ladders. So I pick up a 100 watt equivalent bulb, the ladders and I go round at the appointed time, my student lets me in and takes me to her bedroom. She asks why the ladders? So I can reach the bulb I reply. OK, she says in a strange voice. It's the bulb in her desk lamp that's broken.

I weep for the future.


Do you think it's the fact that they don't know how to do it or they expect you to pay for/do this kind of stuff every time it happens?

How did the conversation go? (For our amusement!)

HYD


It went on the lines of I'll do it this once, but next time I'll charge you £40 to change a lightbulb. I then showed her how to unscrew a light bulb and replace it. She was a bit surprised at my attitude. And she'll be blinded by the 100 watt bulb in a desk lamp.



Ha ha. I'm still unsure if whether she was unable or just unwilling to change the lightbulb herself but hopefully she's learnt her lesson!

HYD

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Re: Useless Students

#281085

Postby AleisterCrowley » January 30th, 2020, 10:08 am

I thought it was normally the tenant's responsibility to replace light-bulbs ?
I'm gradually upgrading mine to LEDs as they 'go'. The GU10 halogens were the first to be replaced- massive improvement.

wheypat
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Re: Useless Students

#281087

Postby wheypat » January 30th, 2020, 10:17 am

AleisterCrowley wrote:I thought it was normally the tenant's responsibility to replace light-bulbs ?
I'm gradually upgrading mine to LEDs as they 'go'. The GU10 halogens were the first to be replaced- massive improvement.


I agree - but as the ceilings are about 12 foot high I said I'd replace them as an act of kindness, I don't want them to construct a chair mountain and fall off and hurt themselves. I'm too kind.

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Re: Useless Students

#281091

Postby Mike88 » January 30th, 2020, 10:28 am

Normally desk lamps require a bulb with a maximum of 60 watts. A 100 watt bulb could get very hot and be a potential fire risk.

wheypat
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Re: Useless Students

#281092

Postby wheypat » January 30th, 2020, 10:30 am

Mike88 wrote:Normally desk lamps require a bulb with a maximum of 60 watts. A 100 watt bulb could get very hot and be a potential fire risk.


yes, it's a 100 equivalent, so actually 12 watt. I thought about that as well.

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Re: Useless Students

#281101

Postby UncleIan » January 30th, 2020, 11:17 am

Snorvey wrote:oh you'll be getting abuse on Instawank, Faceache, Whatscrapp and all the rest.


Ok boomer.

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Re: Useless Students

#281137

Postby Rhyd6 » January 30th, 2020, 1:09 pm

Our daughter and her husband rent out student accomodation and I'm always amazed by how litle parents teach their children, especially when they know they're going to be living in the big bad world on their own. As they both work OH and I are their first point of contact and slowly but surely I'm getting this crop of blighters trained. The different coloured bins labelled recycling won't miraculously walk to the collection point on their own. If you are at university you should be able to distinguish between plastic, glass and paper. Toilets do not clean themselves, neither do showers sinks etc. You do your own washing up a dishwasher is not provided because bitter experience has taught us that some idiots try to wash clothes in the dishwasher. That object in the tall cupboard in the kitchen is a vacuum cleaner, pretend that all the dirt is really space aliens, you'll soon get the hang of annihilating them. Don't even get me started on the kitchen, I finally gave up with the last lot, took pictures and sent them to their parents with a plea that when they arrived home for holidays would they please give their little darlings some basic lesson in kitchen hygiene.

R6

wheypat
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Re: Useless Students

#281157

Postby wheypat » January 30th, 2020, 1:58 pm

Rhyd6 wrote:Our daughter and her husband rent out student accomodation and I'm always amazed by how litle parents teach their children, especially when they know they're going to be living in the big bad world on their own. As they both work OH and I are their first point of contact and slowly but surely I'm getting this crop of blighters trained. The different coloured bins labelled recycling won't miraculously walk to the collection point on their own. If you are at university you should be able to distinguish between plastic, glass and paper. Toilets do not clean themselves, neither do showers sinks etc. You do your own washing up a dishwasher is not provided because bitter experience has taught us that some idiots try to wash clothes in the dishwasher. That object in the tall cupboard in the kitchen is a vacuum cleaner, pretend that all the dirt is really space aliens, you'll soon get the hang of annihilating them. Don't even get me started on the kitchen, I finally gave up with the last lot, took pictures and sent them to their parents with a plea that when they arrived home for holidays would they please give their little darlings some basic lesson in kitchen hygiene.

R6


A game I play with mine every year is to replace the working vacuum cleaner with a virtually non functioning one to see how long it will take them to realise and complain. One group we had complained in the first week - they were great and they stayed for 3 years. Still miss them. Current lot haven't noticed yet . . . . . 5 months in.

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Re: Useless Students

#281160

Postby UncleIan » January 30th, 2020, 2:20 pm

wheypat wrote:A game I play with mine every year is to replace the working vacuum cleaner with a virtually non functioning one to see how long it will take them to realise and complain. One group we had complained in the first week - they were great and they stayed for 3 years. Still miss them. Current lot haven't noticed yet . . . . . 5 months in.


They do...vary...

Next door to us is rented to uni students. It has spanned from ones that start playing bass guitar at midnight - just the once though ;). And the ones that treat it as party central. At the other end of the spectrum was one of the first ones in, that saw there was a very overgrown pond in the garden, and spent the afternoon pulling loads of irises and pond weed out and borrowed our hose to refill the pond so the fish that were in there could survive and have space to swim, then a few weeks later brought us round some spiced pork steak they had left over from a BBQ as a "neighbourly gift". We currently have some with a love of badminton, even outdoors in January. A good year. The decent ones quite often seem to be international students and I guess if have the inclination to move continents to study you're going to be a bit more of a self starter.

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Re: Useless Students

#281171

Postby kempiejon » January 30th, 2020, 3:17 pm

There's a young guy at work, he's about 2 years graduated, he has a technician role in the IT team, he has an electrical device his girlfriend bought him for Christmas that he's not be able to use because it came with a 2pin plug. I offered him a plug and suggested he could replace the one at home, he said he'd not feel comfortable with something like changing a plug. Changing a plug is the sort of life skill I'd expect everyone to have or at least be able to look up and not be scared of attempting. I said I'd show him how. He bought an adaptor from amazon.

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Re: Useless Students

#281183

Postby EssDeeAitch » January 30th, 2020, 4:08 pm

wheypat wrote:My students asked me to go round and change a light bulb. Fair enough, the flat has high ceilings and they don't have ladders. So I pick up a 100 watt equivalent bulb, the ladders and I go round at the appointed time, my student lets me in and takes me to her bedroom. She asks why the ladders? So I can reach the bulb I reply. OK, she says in a strange voice. It's the bulb in her desk lamp that's broken.

I weep for the future.


I will ask the moderators to move this to Laughing Lemons :lol:

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Re: Useless Students

#281188

Postby UncleEbenezer » January 30th, 2020, 4:21 pm

kempiejon wrote:There's a young guy at work, he's about 2 years graduated, he has a technician role in the IT team, he has an electrical device his girlfriend bought him for Christmas that he's not be able to use because it came with a 2pin plug. I offered him a plug and suggested he could replace the one at home, he said he'd not feel comfortable with something like changing a plug. Changing a plug is the sort of life skill I'd expect everyone to have or at least be able to look up and not be scared of attempting. I said I'd show him how. He bought an adaptor from amazon.


Doesn't everything nowadays come with integrated plug? And even a fuse you can replace without opening it?

If my granny knew that her grandson never darned a sock ...

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Re: Useless Students

#281190

Postby Alaric » January 30th, 2020, 4:22 pm

kempiejon wrote:. Changing a plug is the sort of life skill I'd expect everyone to have or at least be able to look up and not be scared of attempting.


It was around thirty years ago, if not longer, that it became the law that electrical appliances had to be sold with plugs pre-fitted. So perhaps anyone under the age of perhaps 45 never acquired the skill of wiring plugs.

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Re: Useless Students

#281209

Postby jfgw » January 30th, 2020, 5:30 pm

kempiejon wrote:I offered him a plug and suggested he could replace the one at home, he said he'd not feel comfortable with something like changing a plug. Changing a plug is the sort of life skill I'd expect everyone to have or at least be able to look up and not be scared of attempting.

Out of interest, I looked up a few websites for fitting UK plugs. Even in these times of fitted plugs on all domestic things that plug in, I still often wire a plug, for example, if the flex is fed through a small hole in a cabinet.

The line should have the least slack and the earth should have the most slack. This is so that, if the flex is pulled out from the plug, the line will disconnect first and the earth will disconnect last. I rewired a plug to a cooker hood once where the wires were all left the same length. This meant that the earth wire would have been tight and the line had a lot of slack. I say that the earth would have been tight as it had pulled out and was millimetres from the line terminal. This was in quite an old house which almost certainly did not have an rcd.

Some websites do point out that the importance of leaving different amounts of slack but some do not.

Check the penultimate photo on the Ultimate Handyman site,
http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/how-t ... ire-a-plug
I reckon that earth wire would be the first to get pulled out.

Wikihow shows the earth with less slack than the neutral (picture 11) although the line might (just) pull out first.
https://www.wikihow.com/Wire-a-UK-Plug
There is, however, a question and answer section down below:
"The cable for my hob has four wires: green/yellow, blue, black and brown, whilst the plug only takes three. Can I use either the brown or black?"
"No! Usually a brown wire is live and black or blue wires are neutral, so they are NOT interchangeable. I haven't seen such a connection in my hobs, so I would recommend that you contact the supplier, manufacturer, or a professional electrician."
Black is not neutral, it is a line. It was neutral when we had the old colour codes but, if there is a brown and a blue, black is line. I have seen hobs with this type of cable but not on ones that are suitable for connecting to a 13A plug.

Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Useless Students

#281228

Postby TUK020 » January 30th, 2020, 7:25 pm

We recruit Electronics MEng graduates from a leading university, one or two per year, and we usually have a couple of penultimate year students as summer interns.

From scary experience, we do not assume they are safe in the Lab. We run a mandatory Electrical Safety training course every year, before they can get anywhere near a bare conductor.
And this is after we have used the interview process to weed out the ones who do not know which end of a soldering iron to pick up.

Wire a circuit up? probably not
Simulate one in a computer model? that's more their comfort zone

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Re: Useless Students

#281311

Postby didds » January 31st, 2020, 8:49 am

TUK020 wrote:Wire a circuit up? probably not
Simulate one in a computer model? that's more their comfort zone



which is of course an indictmenrt of our edicational systems, not of them. Our models just dont really prepare people for reality maybe.

We have all sorts of "controls" in place over who is permitted to drive unaccompnaied. So driver A tottles around town centres at 30 mph for several months dealing with merging/turning traffic, and pedestriams crossing before them etc etc etc before passing their test. At which juncture they can jump straight onto a motorway and do 70 mph where all the dangers come from behind yourself, not in front.

Darwinian maybe?

didds

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Re: Useless Students

#281317

Postby swill453 » January 31st, 2020, 9:21 am

didds wrote:We have all sorts of "controls" in place over who is permitted to drive unaccompnaied. So driver A tottles around town centres at 30 mph for several months dealing with merging/turning traffic, and pedestriams crossing before them etc etc etc before passing their test. At which juncture they can jump straight onto a motorway and do 70 mph where all the dangers come from behind yourself, not in front.

Hence why the law was changed a couple of years ago to allow learners on motorways.

Scott.


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