If one wants to do a silly experiment with a Google account, it's a good idea to create a new Google account just for that, and not use the regular and important one.
If one has done some silly experiments in the past, it may be reasonable to create a new Google account as the "regular and important", and get email old redirected to it.
This kind of online hygiene will only become more and more important as online identities calcify.
I did use a different account, but Google is very good at tracing accounts back to the underlying person. Especially with AdSense, you've got to enter your SSN, which even if your email, address, phone, and whatever else are unblemished will cause the new account to get auto-flagged as well, which as far as I can tell then propagates to that email, phone, etc.
My YouTube account used to be somewhat separate, but during the whole Google Plus integration timeframe they forced you to tie it to your real identity. Which just goes to cement the original point of the dangers of using one master account for so many different services, things that used to be separate end up a mess. See also my various Skype, Zune, Xbox Live, MSDN, Office 365, and Windows accounts which cause me so much annoyance now that Microsoft has integrated a lot of the backend.
Anyway not trying to justify the questionable morals of a college freshman, but it's good to keep in mind the downstream effects of a seemingly minor infraction when multiplied by one corporation controlling so many different types of services.
If one has done some silly experiments in the past, it may be reasonable to create a new Google account as the "regular and important", and get email old redirected to it.
This kind of online hygiene will only become more and more important as online identities calcify.