I’m not talking about studying for class (even though I guess that’s important), I’m talking about scientific studies. We’ve all heard about people selling their bodies to science, or subjecting themselves to obscene amounts of radiation with hopes of becoming a super hero and earning a couple hundred bucks. Well the ones I’m talking about are slightly (a lot more) less drastic. Rochester always sells how this is a research university; try counting next time you go to an information session, I bet it’s at least 5 times. While I am a science major, I’m not so much into research. It’s cool and important for human evolution and whatnot, but it just isn’t my cup of tea. However, the benefit that you and I can gain from attending this fine research institution is that a lot of these studies pay for subjects.
Why become a subject and get paid a measly $7.50 for an hour of completing menial tasks? Because it adds up. Most of these studies don’t take the full hour and when you keep track of everything you actually are getting paid pretty well to do something they use to have monkeys do. Let’s do the math. I have done 3 studies in the past week that involved me and my buddy telling each other how to re-arrange objects, how to order cards, and then I got to sit at a computer with an eye-tracker (mad cool headset that looks at your eyeballs) while looking at a screen an clicking on what the computer told me to. All of these combined took about 2 hours and I got paid a total of $22.50. That’s $11.50/hr. Not such a bad pay rate anymore is it?
The best thing about studies (for all you science majors) is that you can be a subject in an experiment similar to ones you learned about in class two days ago. Not only is that awesome, but in my opinion you gain a better understanding of the concepts when you actually experience them. Where else can you do that? Probably a bunch of other places, but you can do it here too.
As promised last post, I’ll include a picture from my daily goings about. Since I don’t have a picture of me being researched, you’ll have to settle for