My university made us use really crappy power supplies and dev boards. Nothing worked unless you first put a large bulk capacitor on the power supply's output, and small capacitors close to the components.
Also I got bitten by parasitics in capacitors very early in my career: capacitors of different face value will resonate with each other to effectively kill the decoupling network at a specific frequency (resulting, for me, in an amplifier with a nice hole in its frequency response).
Incidentally, in my post below on the MIT RadLab series I mention Vol 23. On p183 parasitic oscillation is mentioned. Also, I recall when working in the now defunct RCA prototype lab, one of the main cure-alls for parasitic oscillations was to place a ferrite bead on a transistor lead (between it and the PWA). It often worked wonders.
Excellent training, especially the parasitic bit. Trouble is somehow many aren't taught that stuff nowadays.
Sounds like an opportunity to build a shenzhen i/o prequel