Students make extra bucks as medical guinea pigs, or so says CNN.com:

College students are known for finding creative ways to earn money, but few can compete with Boston University senior Allison Yochim -- who once earned cash watching dueling images of sea turtles and hardcore pornography.

Yeah, that sounds like a trip.

My college medical guinea pig experience (and say, isn't the "medical" kind of redundant here? doesn't "guinea pig" imply medical experimentation?) wasn't quite like that.

I got to ride a stationary bike for 20 minutes, then sit in a pressurized box breathing air with extra ozone (or not - that was the experiment), then they did lung capacity and blood-oxygen tests on me. I did that a couple of mornings over a few months. It wasn't bad, I was in good riding shape then and there was a $500 check waiting for me at the end. But, after a couple of those, they kicked it up a notch. After one of the bike sessions, it was time for my favorite part^* : a bronchoscopy!. Not only did they stick a scope down my windpipe to see what was going on down there, they squirted saline solution into my lungs to see what kind of stuff they could wash out of me - it's like being drowned from the inside. And then, they tore out chunks of my lung with a little three-pronged grasping claw - and I got to watch it, live, on the TV above my head! I got to watch the claw grab onto, tug on, and finally tear lose a chunk of my lung. And then I got to see it plopped into a steel basin next to my head before it got whisked away to be, I dunno... sliced, drizzled with olive oil and served to the evil head of bronchology with a little lettuce and horseradish? I coughed blood for weeks.

* - well, it's my favorite part of telling the story. It was total fucking hell to sit through. And I thought the procedure was just a one-time thing, so I went back a couple more times after, thinking it was going to be more bike riding and breathing tests - and it was, until the last time. And when they got me up on the operating table for another round of rip-and-drown, I came to my senses and told them there was no way in hell I'd sit through another scoping, and that they could keep their money. The group of med students who were there to observe the procedure looked pretty surprised. I hope I taught them something about what a bronchoscopy feels like.

Here's a different perspective; I would not call it "pretty cool".

They paid me anyway. I bought a guitar.