…pretend to like jazz to sound intellectual.
PRETEND TO LIKE JAZZ TO SOUND INTELLECTUAL.
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Remember those late-night common room sessions or coffee shop debates? The air thick with ambition and the subtle pressure to sound profoundly insightful on any topic, even ones you’d Googled five minutes prior? If you didn’t occasionally find yourself nodding sagely to a Coltrane track playing softly in the background, making thoughtful "hmm" noises and dropping casual references to bebop, did you even truly experience the collegiate environment here?
It’s an unspoken rite of passage, isn't it? That moment when someone pivots the conversation to avant-garde art or obscure philosophical texts, and suddenly, you're all pretending to grasp the nuances of free jazz. You might have preferred pop anthems or classic rock, but in those moments, you were a connoisseur of complex improvisations, subtly trying to remember if Miles Davis played the trumpet or saxophone. The stakes felt incredibly high – intellectual street cred, the unspoken competition of who could appear the most cultured.
These weird conversations, these unique Ivy vibes, they shape us. They’re the foundation of countless inside jokes and the shared understanding that beneath the polished exterior, we were all navigating a bizarre, wonderful, and sometimes hilarious intellectual performance. It wasn't about deception; it was about aspiration, about stretching ourselves, even if it meant a brief, awkward detour into jazz appreciation. It’s a collective memory, a quirky badge of honor. What other unspoken rules did you live by?