Jezebel

Education is the ultimate status symbol but not in the way one might think. A Birkin can be bought, borrowed, gifted, or faked. The kind of education I am talking about cannot be any of those things. It is either there or it is not and the moment you open your mouth in a room full of people who have it you will know immediately which category you fall into and so will everyone else.

I do not mean a degree necessarily although usually yes. I mean the kind of intellectual fluency that allows you to move between subjects with relative ease and enough depth that you can hold your own in any conversation and contribute something real to it rather than just nodding along and hoping no one asks you a direct question. That fluency is built through years of experience, reading, exposure and engagement with ideas and it signals a level of self investment that no purchase can replicate or approximate.