Hobbies at college.

[Bulman]

Apart from drinking and 'studying' what did/do people do while on their college phase?

Two weeks in with a low work demand, weekends can be slow! Any good hobbies to actually do with sea/engineering/electrical? Low cost would be good, as well as area specific like shields

[Dosedmonkey]

If your interested in engineering or electrical. Can you buy yourself old banger motorbike or car and do it up nice and new and sell it for a bit of extra cash. If you need specialist tool, usually college will lend it to you for a couple of hours too.

Books, don't under estimate books, get ahead on studying read for 20 minutes on the weekend an engineering book, it'll help a lot in the future.

Personally computer stuff interests me, there is loads of CAD (computer aided design) and electrical software for computers you can download for free.

Actual clubs I'm not sure for shields, in Southampton there is a group of engineers who do maintenance on a steam ship down at the docks. Possibly you can get in contact with the river crossing ferry in shields, and spend a bit of time on there with an engineer, anyone local on here?

Just did a quick google and found this, model engine society,

http://www.tsmee.co.uk/

[chris]

Yes the 1st part of phase 3 eto at shields is pretty light, though I thought they might have rebalanced the course a bit by now. Sports wise you could try crewing down at the shields dinghy club, theres a climbing wall near the tesco, artifical snowboarding/skiing in sunderland. I did some cycling on not so windy days.

The new swimming pool should have opened by now if youre into that.

It might be worth learning some networking and IT if you can find a teach yourself guide as its a pretty useful eto skill not taught on the course.

[Dosedmonkey]

It might be worth learning some networking and IT if you can find a teach yourself guide as its a pretty useful eto skill not taught on the course.

Thats strange, on the ETO short course (3 monther) some engineers take after getting their OOW they give you some basic networking class at Warsash (well many years ago).

[chris]

It is strange, though the more in depth 3 year eto course run in ireland goes into networking in quite depth. You get a beng without honours over there compared to a foundation degree over here.

[Bulman]

Pools not opened yet unfortunately it's been delayed haha! Any recommended sites or books?

[Dosedmonkey]

Depends what you are interested in,

Theres a good practical engineering one, I saw one copy of it in the shields library other week, Imarest N.E. Chell book; Operation and Maintenance of Machinery on Motorships.



A good overall basic marine mechanical/equipment introduction book there is D.A. Taylor, Introduction to Marine Engineering. This is in the library.


If your looking for something more ETO related, I'm sure Chris can recommend you something.
Depends how much you understand already though, basic electrical books go there are two main marine ones,
- Marine Electrical Equipment and Practice, H.D. McGeorge

- Practical Marine Electrical Knowledge, D.T. Hall (This is in the library)

[Martyboy]

Pools not opened yet unfortunately it's been delayed haha! Any recommended sites or books?

Invest ?4 in a bus ticket to the stadium of light, next to it is the Sunderland Aquatic centre, that'll keep you busy for swimming, really amazing pool, usually get your own lane etc I also go down to South Shields sea cadets, they are all very nautical and the likes, also have an Army Cadet unit and an Air Training corps Squadron about 5 mins from the college. Shields snooker club down at Chi is good if your a snooker fan, they also have darts and dominos and the likes. One of the lecturers was telling me he goes to a Jujitsu class near the college on a Thursday night. Get to the county and pay a pound for a discount card so you get 20% off all food and drink, cheapest pint is ?1.68 and you could take up drinking as a hobby one night a week, Millions to do in Shields man :P

[chris]

Nevet heard about the discount card, pretty cheap already.

Apart from the practical marine electrical book which was very good eto oral prep, the college has 2 copies of a really good book on ship automation published by witherby.

http://www.witherbyseamanship.com/ships-automation-engineers-etos-15.html

[Martyboy]

Nevet heard about the discount card, pretty cheap already.

It's just new, good thing is it's for everything, so Tues & Weds is curry night, curry rice nan bread and a drink for ?5.99, then you get yoru 20% off that soooooo...... Everyone's a winner Anyway, I digress