Students find ways to make quick cash by donating blood, plasma, sperm

Rounding out the first month of classes, students are finding that the cash they saved this summer is starting to run out.

The obvious answer? Get a job. But with changing schedules and multiple commitments, a part-time job might not be a viable option.

However, there are several ways to make money in Bloomington without resorting to scalping basketball tickets, playing the lottery, selling drugs or selling all of your belongings on eBay and craigslist.

One way for broke college students to make some quick cash is to sell plasma, essentially the stuff in your blood in which the red and white blood cells are suspended.

After answering a few questions and taking a blood test, your blood is drawn from your arm. The blood cells are removed from the plasma and then pumped back in.

This process is repeated several times until the desired amount of plasma is collected.

“It’s definitely not the worst thing in the world,” past donor and Bloomington resident Bill Messer said. “It’s probably worth the money, but it makes you feel really cold afterward.”

Donors at Biolife Plasma Services can earn money each week. $20 is paid for the first donation and $30 for the next. The catch is that if you miss your scheduled second appointment, you start back at $20.

“When the students are here, a lot of them bring in homework or something to read from class,” Mark Magsum, center supervisor at Biolife, said. “At the same time they’re making money, they can do a little studying.”

There are other ways of donating your body’s naturally produced materials that, depending on the individual, will either be much less stressful or much more uncomfortable.

Genome Resources in Indianapolis offers donors $50 a viable sample of sperm. This might seem like easy money, but there’s a more rigorous screening process than with donating plasma, including a three-generation family health history. Donors must also commit to weekly trips to Indianapolis for six months.

One quick way to earn extra cash in your spare time is by participating in paid psychological experiments conducted by various IU departments. Fliers posted in the Psychology Building and throughout campus display information about research experiments that aim to study various aspects of human cognition and behavior, ranging from the perception of   accented speech to drug abuse.

The Interdisciplinary Experimental Laboratory offers participants $15 to $40 to undergo experiments that attempt to analyze how complex social and environmental stimuli affect human behavior. Sessions typically last between one and two hours but vary from experiment to experiment, according to the lab’s Web site.

The IELab consists of faculty and graduate students from several departments conducting research.

“Researchers have access to the IELab calendar and make their own reservations,” professor James Walker said. “There is no central coordinator.”

Students interested in researching with IELab can register as a potential participant at www.indiana.edu/~ielab.

“Each opportunity to participate in an experimental session is announced via e-mail by the researcher conducting the particular experimental session,” Walker said. “The students who respond first, via e-mail, are chosen to be in the experiment.”