The Hoo-Ha Dialogues

I've been working on refining my snap judgments lately, particularly as regards my fellow students. Not all public health disciplines are alike, so it's important that my stereotypes be accurate. The Nutrition girls (and they are all girls) for instance, are almost universally bitchy and uptight, possibly due to low blood sugar--there is one exception, a disarming middle-aged hippie who has been known to put weed in her smoothies. My group, Epidemiology/Biostatistics, is really quite a good collection of folks, with only two ass clowns out of a group of 21 that I have identified so far. Infectious Diseases is more of a mixed bag, and I only know one Policy guy, though he's very sweet. I haven't met any Environmental Healthers, and although I know there's one other master's program, I can't even remember what it's called, something like Community and Social and Behavioral and Environmental and World Peace Studies. The coolest of all are the Maternal and Child Health students. I was chatting with two of them the other day named Jen and Rohini. Jen was sharing about how in the middle of epidemiology lecture someone had leaned over to her and whispered, "Did you know that gonorrhea usually involves green discharge?"

Jen was properly impressed, still shaking hours afterward. "Can you imagine?" she asked us, "Green ooze coming out of your..."

"Your hoo-ha?" Rohini suggested.

"Wait a minute," I interrupted, perturbed. "You guys are in Maternal and Child Health. Are you telling me you can't bring yourselves to say the word 'vagina'?"

"No, not at all," Rohini explained. "When you're talking about it being sacred and loving and giving birth and stuff it's a vagina. But when you're talking about green discharge, it's a hoo-ha."

I may have to switch majors.