So, I got an iPod for my birthday this year.

At first I was ecstatic. I brought my tiny, blueish gizmo to school nearly every day so that I could jam to my tunes during PE and free period. It was awesome.

I got to dance frenetically down the hallway like a silhouette out of those famous commercials, with my iPod clipped safely to my pocket. I could listen to my music anywhere, anytime (as long as I wasn't in class, of course). It was so much fun. I even had my headphones in during five-minute passing periods sometimes.

My elation didn't last very long, however. People I barely knew decided they had the right to grab the iPod while I was listening to it and scroll through the "artists" menu, commenting on anything they disapproved of.

"Eww, you have (Fall Out Boy/Britney Spears/Green Day/insert popular band name here) on your iPod? How can you even listen to that?" they would say. These people would then shake their heads disappointedly and slouch off, as if they had somehow expected better of me.

I noticed the same phenomenon occurring in the lounge. With only one stereo, this is probably something I should have expected, but it was still off-putting when someone would come in while my friends and I were listening to a song we liked and shout, "Ugh, what is this crap?" before sliding in their own CD.

While I know that every popular band has mindless fangirls who will hate you forever if you say you don't personally care for their music, at Uni I've mostly noticed the trend going the other way.

It seemed almost like people were trying to listen to the most obscure band in existence just to look cool and independent in front of everyone else, and not because they actually liked the sound. The word "pop" was always said with a certain sneer.

I know I'm hypocritical about this. Most of my friends are really into musicals, which I can't stand, and sometimes it's incredibly hard to not tell them exactly what I think about their endless playlists of Broadway songs.

In the end, though, I remember that everyone has different tastes. Music is such a subjective thing that it seems stupid to think that anyone's opinion is always right.