MistRess

Menstruation is hardly the stuff of poetry. In fact, in India, if periods are talked about at all, it’s in whispered code, and never with someone of the opposite gender.

But a group of medical students at the Calicut Medical College in the southern state of Kerala wanted to change all that. So in March, they launched a contest called Haiku, which encouraged students to submit short stories, poems and verse about menstruation, all under 140 characters. The idea was to get young people to speak more openly about periods.

“It’s a normal, biological thing, we shouldn’t be ashamed,” says James Paul, a student at the college who came up with the contest idea. Before going to medical school, he admitted that talking about menstruation made him feel shy. But his professors and textbooks helped him get comfortable with the topic.

Breaking The Taboo Of Talking About Periods

Shannon Kaiser (via love-inspire-universally)

More people have more student loan debt than at any time in history. Average student loan debt has tripled since the mid-1990s. Last year, the average student debt for a college graduate was more than $35,000, according to Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan expert at Cappex, which connects students with colleges and scholarships.