Tales From The College Program: Guinea Pigs and Sorority Girls

You may find this hard to believe, but being a Disney Intern does not pay very well.  It was because of this, that Dan and I decided to find ways to some make extra money.  The easiest way we found was to sell our plasma.  There were a few draw backs to this though.

1. It only paid $15.
2. We had to pay $5 in tolls to get there.
3. It was 40 minutes away.
4. We had to sit in a waiting room with mostly homeless people for an hour.
5. Plus another hour in the chair with a needle the size of a Capri Sun straw in your arm
6. Dan took one of the plasma girls out on a date and never called her again.
7. The one time Dan's roommate Rickli came with us, he got violently ill in the CiCi's pizza bathroom afterwards.
8. One time they jammed the needle through my vein which gave me a hematoma that went from my shoulder to my wrist.

Eventually we found something much easier that not only paid more, but also fed us.  We became professional guinnea pigs.  Using the website gpgp.net (Guinnea Pigs Get Paid) Dan found out that we could make $1200 by simply staying at a resreach facility in Gainsville for the weekend.  The three of us signed up, passed the physical inspection and before we knew it, we were locked up with 20 other lab rats. 

Aside from Dan, Rickli, and I only 2 other people in the study spoke english.  They were girls our age that went to the Universty of Florida.  What they were doing there I have no idea, because they didn't look like your average guinea pig.  One of the girls even bragged about a time that she made out with Nick Carter at a bar. 

We checked into the facility on Friday morning, slept over Saturday and Sunday, then had to come back on Monday with our pee jug and poop journal for a final check up.  This study was for high blood pressure medication, to test the effects on someone with normal blood pressure.  It was also the only study we did that required us to pee in a jug and take notes on our bowel movements, but hey this story is supposed to be about a Sorority right?

We had become friendly with the Doctors who ran the facility and they knew we lived in Orlando.  They offered to let us stay at the facility Sunday night so we wouldnt have to drive back and forth to Gainsville for 6 hours on Monday.  We had nothing better to do so we took their offer.  One of the girls asked us if we had dinner plans for Sunday night, we did not so she invited us over to her sorority house for dinner.  We may have been guinnea pigs, but we weren't complete idiots, we accepted.

We had all day Sunday to ourselves, we grabbed our pee jugs and headed to the movie theater to see "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" then we snuck into "Euro Trip."  Spoiler alert, both movies are awful.  Our date with destiny was approaching so we headed back to the research lab to get ready for our big night.

Our host had told us to dress up, but when you know that for the next 3 days you're going to be peeing into a jug, wearing nice clothes isn't your number one priority.  I borrowed a shirt from Rickli and we left.  This was before GPS on phones and none of us had ever been to Gainsville before, so I have no idea how we found this sorority house.

As we approached the door we realzied that we didn't even know this girls name.  Who were we supposed to ask for if she didn't answer the door?  Eventually one of us knocked and a girl who wasnt Heather/Jennifer (pick your favorite sorority girl name) opened the door.  Luckily instead of asking who we were there to see, she asked for our names.  We passed the inspection and she had us sit in a holding area with some other dudes where she explained the rules to us.

Now, you may be thinking, "I've seen college movies, there are no rules!"  Well, this sorority had one, "Guys were only allowed on green carpet."  This meant we could be in the entry way, main room, or dining room, that's it.  When you got to the stairs the carpet changed colors.  After she was done explaining the rules Heather/Jennifer showed up and took us to the dining room.  It was huge!  I don't know how many walls they tore down, but this dining room felt like a school cafeteria. 

We sat down and were waiting for our food when one of the head girls stood up to make announcements.  Maybe I was extra hungry or tired of peeing in a jug, but the announcements went on forever.  After the head girl was done, guys from neighboring Fraternities would come to the front to say something along the lines of "Hey Ladies, I'm Brad and this is Chad we're from (insert frat name here) we are having a car wash/party/bake sale/t-shirt sale/(whatever frats guys do) coming up and we want to invite you/sell it to you/get you drunk!" This was always followed by squeals of excitement.

Finally the announcements were done, time to eat.  Nope, not yet.  Now all the girls had to introduce their guests.  The first girl stood up "This is Dave and Rick from (insert Frat name)."  The guys names were also followed by squeals and screams, but those were nothing compared to the noise made when it was announced "And guess what ladies...Theyre SIIIINNNNGGGLLLLLLEEEEEEE!"  The girls went nuts, apparently Sorority girls have a thing for single Frat guys.  Do you want to guess how the next Frat guy intoduction went?  The same, they just kept getting louder.

Dan, Rickli, and I looked at each other, we were all thinking the same thing.  We turned to Heather/Jennifer and said "You know, we're cool if you dont introduce us."  It was too late though, we had already been spotted.  Maybe the girls had screamed themselves tired, or maybe it was because Heather/Jennifer gave us the worst introduction ever, but the girls reaction to the three of us was worse than we had expected.

Heather/Jennifer half stood up and in one quick breath said "HeythisisDanRickliandDonnie" she started to sit down when she remembered she needed to tell these girls about our obvious relationship status. "oh yeah, theyre single."  She mumbled it even faster than she had said our names.  The sorority girls were not pleased, they did not squeal, the did not scream, the did not make a peep.

We ate our spaghetti as fast as we could, stood in the main family room long enough as to not appear ungrateful then got the hell out of there.  Since we spent the night at the research facility, we were the first ones checked out in the morning.  We took our checks and headed back to Orlando, we never saw Heather/Jennifer again.