{"id":619073,"date":"2026-09-17T16:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T16:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619073\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T16:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T16:28:09","slug":"a-crash-course-in-life-skills-for-students-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619073\/","title":{"rendered":"A crash course in life skills for students | Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regarding teaching children life skills (Letters, 14 September<\/a>), in the 1990s I worked as a student accommodation manager. A mother phoned me devastated that her son had not been allocated catered halls. \u201cHe can\u2019t cook,\u201d she pleaded. Close to the end of my tether with hundreds of students to house, I retorted brusquely: \u201cYou\u2019ve got three weeks, teach him.\u201d
Helen Barney
Mumbles, Swansea<\/p>\n

Some 28 years ago, my son went to university armed with fundamental cooking skills. After making a bolognese sauce for eight, he became the chef and never had to buy food or do the washing up in his entire first year.
Jan May
Deal, Kent<\/p>\n

My university friends in the 1970s credit me with saving them from starvation by sharing my discovery of instant mashed potato.
John Rushton
Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire<\/p>\n

Re location-tracking apps (Location-tracking apps have turned me into a gibbering wreck \u2013 but I just can\u2019t look away, 16 September<\/a>), I promised my adult kids that I would only check their whereabouts in emergencies. Now I find myself looking to see which supermarket they\u2019ve gone to so I can ask them to pick up some exotic fruit I\u2019ve just found in a recipe. They must rue the day they asked me to get the app so they could check I was safe on solo\u00a0camper van trips.
Penny Kay
Lancaster<\/p>\n

If you had \u00a336m rattling around in your pocket, think of the good you could do \u2013 schools, hospitals, housing the homeless. But no, you give it to Nigel Farage (Report, 12 September<\/a>). Sometimes I despair.
Keith Langton
Kirkcudbright, Dumfries & Galloway<\/p>\n

email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Regarding teaching children life skills (Letters, 14 September), in the 1990s I worked as a student accommodation manager.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-619073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}