Not wanting to go home after my freshman year, I lied and said I knew Fortran and got a job working for a grad student in a tokamak lab. One of my jobswas to turn a knob if a pulse on a scope shrunk. This was a CO2 laser drivingsome other IR band laser actually used for probing plasmas. The grad warned me that he hadcut the cuff off a denim jacket by being in the wrong place of the primary beam.We didn't wear eye protection though. And once my radiation dosimeter was offscale, butthat was likely due to wearing it in the rain.
During a 'shot' we had to go into another room with a metal door closed.One of the other grad students would always shut his eyes, I noticed.I eventually asked him why. Because of a pulsed ruby laser also used in the experiment.If it went astray, he wanted to have retinas left.
I also froze bits of my lunch in the LN2 that was dripping.
Big science for a young kid from cow & corn country.