Talking of a shoestring budget, sometimes it's a good thing. I actually learned more useful things about EE by fixing broken test gear than doing an undergraduate course. The course was so heavily theoretical that when it came to actually building prototypes, nothing worked and no one knew why, not even the lab techs. So I spent most of the time going round helping fixing people's limping final year projects.
Agree with this. I had to make my own equipment everywhere I went. The people I met later in my career who went to nice schools, with illustrious research experience had no idea what they were doing. Okay that's an exaggeration. But, when they entered industry they trusted every black box and rationalized every bizarre thing they saw as if their results depended entirely on their domain of interest.
Negative concentrations no problem! That must mean the machine is tracking the previous known value and this is the difference! Oh my oh my... The things I've seen the highly/expensively educated get paid lots of money to do, present, and be rewarded for in regulated industries....
Life is what you take out of it :)