
So this is sort of strange… A good way to earn money at Stanford (which is immediately requisitioned by the thieving overpriced bookstore) is to be a participant in people’s experiments in the Psychology department or at the Business school. I do this quite a lot since I have yet to find permanent employment of any kind (although I have an interview in about an hour for a job as a Search Engine Marketing Analyst, which I believe has something to do with the ads from Google) and it pays pretty well. So I was doing one on Friday, and I was a little surprised because usually these things are pretty dull and involve looking at dots on a screen, or filling out endless surveys about ‘How anxious do you feel right now? How fuzzy do you feel right now? How salty do you feel right now?’ This one on the other hand, involved hiding under a desk in a room of toppled filing cabinets and pretending to be an earthquake victim. After about 3 minutes of lying in silence, there’s the sound of gears, and a robot that looks almost exactly like the one pictured above drives towards me, asking
‘Are you injured?’
‘No.’
‘Please stay still while I scan you for injuries. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. Scan complete. The rescuers will be coming for you soon. I am very sorry you are in any discomfort.’
And then it drove off again. Pretty good way to earn 15 dollars.