Reality nowadays when a piece of lab equipment breaks down is that the kids call tech support, i.e. The Professor. You wish they'd consult documentation or their own brain, more experienced students in the lab, the tech support number on the business card that's stuck to the instrument &c p.p., but instead they immediately kick the matter upstairs instead of consulting peers or using the means at their disposal. Their childlike trust in authorities is too great.
I still can't weld like some of my friends. They're so brilliant, it'd take me years to catch up.
Anyway: if you really want to sell students on becoming the complete Scientific Humanist Who Delicately Breaks Rules AND Can Fix Anything, which you seem to fancy, start off the laboratories with "LSD Synthesis: from Ergot to Your Homemade Blotter Art" and then break the thermal cycler before the next lab, with the phosphorescence plasmids.
And, yes, in the U.S. and elsewhere, I would expect some (perhaps milder than I imagine) difficulties with that; and, no, I don't really condone drug use but I think you can see where I'm coming from with this reasoning.
Reality is most people rely on others for help. And there isn't a damned thing wrong with that. Indeed, the implication of the problem there is that it is not right to help and guide others. How is that ok?
Would it be great if we were all more self sufficient? I think so, but I don't have anything to back that belief. Especially knowing we are social creatures. And, all evidence is we have succeeded in large because we are social creatures. Even the giants among us relied heavily on social influence.