Ruby Granger #18 Still no deal with Waterstones but half her food was mailed from home

[icicles21]

Not to mention that if you haven't read all of Dickens by the time you are 16 or something then what the hell are you doing studying English lit? lol

Nah. I'm in my fourth year of an English Lit degree and couldn't get further than twenty pages into Hard Times, and that's the full extent of my Dickens knowledge (except for A Muppet Christmas Carol, if that counts...)

There are far more interesting things to read imo.

 

[GoinDowntown]

I don't really get what she hates about uni to be honest. She never leaves her room anyway, so what does it matter which room she makes her to-do lists in?

I thought it was strange that she said it's ok to call your parents just to know they're still there? Does she think they cease to exist when she can't physically see them? She's regressed to the mentality of a three year old.

I really hope her parents aren't enabling this behaviour.

As for the ridiculous "so long as it's not hurting anyone, why shouldn't you do what you want" argument, she clearly doesn't consider the environmental factor of taking a train twice a week and getting her parents to pick her up and drop her off at the train station, nor the costs all this travel must accrue. (Or does she have an unlimited rail pass?)

She is inconveniencing her parents and probably worrying them a lot. She's taking attention away from Martha.
And she is hurting herself. She can't settle in and feel like home because she doesn't stay long enough to find a good routine. So much wasted time travelling where she could be doing other stuff.

I don't think she's inconveniencing Blakeney to be honest, she is probably glad to get a break from Ruby and have some other friends over to watch "bad television" while Ruby is out.

But maybe if she had some more friends she could hang out with them on the weekends. No one is forcing her to go to any bloody parties (who would invite her anyway?). But, before Covid at least, why couldn't she have hosted a movie night or an afternoon tea party or even a group study session? Not every party has to involve alcohol or drugs? If she organises it herself, she can have it on her own terms with the activities that she enjoys.

Being an introvert doesn't mean you won't have any friends. Thinking you're superior to other people and not wanting to expose yourself to other viewpoints is what causes you not to have any friends. But she's lumped all the other students into the same drinking, clubbing, drug-taking, sleeping around category and refuses to have anyhing further to do with any of them. Instead she prefers to run home to mummy and daddy to play baby.

 

[xoxoxo13]

Just a little reminder that uni really might not be the best time of their lives for some people. Personally, my uni years sucked but it was due to untreated mental illnesses. I guess it hits a bit close to home because I lived my uni years like Ruby, minus the studying. And I regret not getting help, or the right help, earlier because I'm sure I would have enjoyed my early 20s so much more.

Her issue is pretty much what mine was. Social anxiety and not realizing that feeling anxious is part of breaking the anxious cycle and growing. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. Which is something she hasn't realized yet. And if she doesn't, she will be 30 and regret her 20s. She's spent her life doing busy work and now she just isolates herself and plays childhood pretend.

 

[CatCafe234]

I'm surprised no one (from what I can tell, sorry if anyone has I couldn't see anything) has mentioned Martha's new video.

Main takeaways are this:
- Marfa is emassing a rather impressive collection of questionable tattoos.
- Marfa has dyed her hair (and forehead) again.
-Marfa has genuinely put more effort into editing this very basic tattoo video then I think Ruby ever has.
- Marfa states that her parents wanted to called her fucking 'Strawberry', which just feeds into the theory that her parents don't have a clue what they are doing.
- Marfa has gotten a tattoo of Haku from spirited away, which is for Ruby apparently (?), and in the same chain of thought we essentially get Marfa calling Ruby out for looking like a 12 year old (in relation to the character Haku).
-Marfa states one of sister's friends did a stick and poke tattoo on her, I am honestly shocked Ruby would have a friend willing to do so, unless there is another sister that the Bones have locked in the dusty attic.

TL;DR Marfa said Ruby looks like a 12 year old, and can edit better than Ruby, whilst being miles more entertaining than Ruby.

Ahh, that makes things make sense now - when Marfa went to get her Betty Boop tattoo her mum went along and got a tattoo of a strawberry, which she said was for Marfa. I had always thought it was a nickname and wondered how they got ‘Strawberry’ from Marfa, since Ma Granger said she was going to get another tattoo of a bee, for Ruby (and I can see how you can get ‘Bee’ as a nickname from Ruby). Hearing that her parents wanted to call her Strawberry makes that make sense now, but wow, Marfa dodged a bullet with that one! Apologies if there are any Strawberries reading, but what a name to go though life with.

 

[tuneyloon]

Rubes, get some nice petite womens' clothing that fits you properly. I'm not talking about sizing I mean like the seams and cuts of blazers/skirts look nicer when you get items made for shorter women with shorter proportions. It makes a big difference in looking put together. That corduroy blazer looks like it was pulled out of an old dress-up bin. Disclaimer - I say this as someone who dresses like Molly Weasley so I can't really comment.

 

[Mediamusings]

Not to mention that if you haven't read all of Dickens by the time you are 16 or something then what the hell are you doing studying English lit?
[/QUOTE]
I mean, I have a degree in English and have never read Dickens. Since when is he considered THE canonical author that all English students or book lovers have to read in order to be taken seriously? I know in this case we are talking about Ruby, and she is not exactly the model bookworm or student she so wishes she was. But, claiming that everyone should have read Dickens as a teenager, otherwise "what are you even doing" makes it sound like you have a very narrow definition of what studying English should look like, that doesn't match what reading for the degree is actually like. (At least not in my experience).

 

[Satisfying Click]

Ruby's latest video is interesting. I wonder whether her parents and extended family talked about the wonderful university experience as a way to get her to fly the nest and embrace it. Obviously no one could have predicted a pandemic, but as others have said, Ruby has emotionally regressed a lot in her time since starting and I think this is her way of pushing back and getting to the child-like state she wants.

It was also a culture shock for her - it's normal to be one of the top graded people at college to then realise there are far smarter people around you - you accept it and mature as a result. I think Ruby wanted to be the darling of her course and enjoy tea with her tutors whilst they dusted off a first edition to lend to her.

 

[July9696]

“I still want to go home EVERY DAY”

I don’t want to make fun of her for this at all. This is such an issue. She’s in her FOURTH year of uni, she’s 21 and everyday she feels like she wants to go home?!

I wonder what it is about her parents, her thoughts on independence and adulthood that has caused this codependency. I hope she realises this is a serious barrier. This is one topic I’d like to see her do a video on. Very personal so maybe she wouldn’t but wow.

 

[gossip_guy]

Her latest video is almost 22 mins long? What could she even have to say for 22 mins?

Blah blah blah CANDLES something something OCTOBER! Blah blah blah CHRISTMAS yadda yadda yadda NORMALISE HOMESICKNESS! Blah blah blah ACTUALLY blah blah blah I MADE AN EXECUTIVE DECISION NOT TO SOCIALISE ramble ramble ramble AND THAT'S OKAY! Blah blah blah PEER PRESSURE yadda yadda yadda I WAS BULLIED! something something BLAKENEY!

 

[CalicoMushroom80]

I honestly dont know what to say

 

[gossip_guy]

Also, while I’m here and have a bev in hand, can we just talk once more about her obnoxious use of emojis? She’s on her way home for reading week, and I quote, ””. What does that even fucking mean? She’s better than all of us because 1) she’s taking the train for fucking once, 2) she’s going to be READING next week unlike us plebs, 3) other, please specify? (lol the premise is she’s better than us, we all know she’s a smug bitch)

I use exclusively for passive-aggressive ”fuck you” purposes, please let me know if there’s another way to interpret it.

Four angel emojis. Four members of her immediate family. She's planning to murder-suicide her family; they'll all be together forever soon in that big Victorian boarding school in the sky.

 

[gossip_guy]

Do you not remember last year when her mom cut a couple of inches off and she freaked out

"But mummy, now I can't repost videos from a year and a half ago and pretend they're from today," Ruby cried, like a spoilt baby whose golden rattle and substantial inheritance had been taken away. "Put my hair back on!"
"But sweetheart...that's not how hair works," Mother Granger said. "Don't worry, it'll grow back."
But Ruby couldn't conceive of a world where she didn't get her way or had to wait for anything. So she stamped her feet and screamed until her vocal chords were strained with the shrill cries of privilege until her mother just taped the shorn locks of hair back on.
"There we go, sweetheart!" Mother Granger said nervously. "All fixed!"
Her mother's fear of more tantrums dissipated when she realised Ruby would gladly accept any reality in which she got her way, even a completely fictional one. So Ruby posted a photo of herself with her new haircut on Instagram, along with several other pictures she claimed to be from the same day; two were from eight months prior, and another from her first day of school at aged six.

 

[Ilaariaa]

What's with all the preaching?

We need to normalise wearing X
We need to let go of the idea that we should only wear Y
We shouldn't have to wear Z if we don't want to...

And why is she so defensive about not wearing jeans? Nobody gives a fuck...?

In my experience, as a university student in a big city you can wear pretty much whatever the fuck you want. I mean maybe someone's gonna think "ew wtf is she wearing" but that's about it. It's not middle school, Ruby, nobody's gonna bully you because you don't wear jeans or whatever. She's defensive about her clothes because she herself is insecure about them and she's projecting.

 

[irunforfun]

I know Blakeney is no way near as awful as Roobee but I’m starting to think she is far more complicit in this whole charade than she’s given credit for. She could go out and do different things, not have every meal and study time etc with Roobee. She is an adult who can make choices. But they both seem to have morphed into 7 year olds in early 20s bodies.
And will someone please explain to me how Roobee gets the grades she gets when she makes zero sense and her ‘understanding’ of literature is at best immature and superficial and, at worst, utter BS?!

 

[Ilaariaa]

Re the study tubers not trying again, Jack Edwards has (three times?) but he seems obsessed and has wagered all his self-esteem on getting in. Jade got hooked by the Minerva scam's claim to be more exclusive than Oxford, and the brain stopped thinking right there. She paid a deposit upfront before finding how much it costs per year (cleverly hidden by Minerva on their publicly available Costs page) and that Minerva didn't do the courses she talked about taking (cleverly hidden by Minerva on their publicly available page about their courses. As for Ruby, I agree with those who say a gap year would have done her the world of good, but she probably wouldn't have taken advantage of it, and a second rejection would have been catastrophic.

Not getting into Oxford was the best thing for Ruby and her mental health. She would never have coped with the 2 essays + other work a week, the short terms and quick topic change, and the tutorial system. You don't have time to endlessly rewrite essays. You don't have time to turn all your notes into flashcards and drill them. You don't have time to draft and memorize what you will say in your tutorial. Your tutor will be trying to have get you to spontaneously think through criticisms of your arguments, which is where Ruby fell down in the interview. She took a massive folder of stuff she memorized but struggled to think on her feet when given an unseen poem. She was also at the height (or should one say the lowest point?) of her first year Hermione idealization and had only just published Erimentha...so I can (with a lot of cringing) imagine her approaching the interview as Hermione/Erimentha. Let us hope she didn't at one point say "Did you know...?"

As for Jade, I am ashamed to say I liked her a lot back then in the Oxford application days, before she fell for the Minerva scam and began lying to her viewers. But I don't think she would have done well at Oxford either. She said months before that she left a better performing sixth form and rejoined her old "big fish in small pond" school because of the top school's reluctance to help her when she was struggling in maths (I think). The impression I had, especially after she got all A*, was that she preferred to be spoonfed the material and memorize it, rather than puzzle through herself. And like Ruby's reliance on memorization, I can see that attitude revealing itself in interview and being a real problem if she got in.

I have zero experience with Oxbridge as I'm not British but from what I've read here about the selection process and from my own experience as a somewhat capable uni student, I think the way Ruby approached the exam was completely wrong.

She spent two years preparing by obsessively reading, annotating and memorizing everything and anything she could get her hands on, only to freeze when she was asked to comment on a poem. I'm sure she knew going on that one of the things she could be asked to do was comment on a poem she'd never seen before. That's not really something you can prepare for. I mean, of course you need to be knowledgeable about literature and poetry, but other than that, it's more about what you are able to come up with on the spot than remembering something you read six months ago and repeating that.

What I would have done (again, I'm talking completely out of my ass here, just sharing what my approach would have been) is I would have tried to practice analysing things I haven't seen before. Maybe tried to establish a rough outline of "where to start" to avoid the panic moment where you don't know what to say and your brain is racing in a million different directions. I find it's very important to be able to anchor yourself to some core elements you can talk about or handle first that will naturally lead you forward.

As people who have studied classics will know when you want to translate a Latin or Greek text you find the main verb first, its subject, and you go from there. You don't frantically read the whole text and panic because it's all gibberish and you don't know where to start.
I think that's what happened to Ruby, she read the poem and reacted like a chicken who's lost its head, did not know where to start, couldn't form coherent thoughts, could not remember anything she'd read because of course, it's too much information and none of it is directly relevant to the task at hand, and her brain just shut down. Complete panic mode. And the rest is history, she failed and all of her hard work lead her nowhere, because it was not contextualized to what she'd be asked to do.

 

[staryeet]

I know it’s briefly been discussed here, but what do you think Martha thinks about not getting letters, not invited to family gatherings etc? On the one hand I think she wants to just be a normal uni student with a healthy, typical social life but on the other I know that I would feel pretty sidelined by my family. We know that Martha and Ruby are completely different people but surely that’s no reason to prioritise and continue to baby the older one while leaving the younger one. But maybe I’m just reading into it a bit too much?

 

[Fastgirl154]

HOLY FVCKing Everything. She is scary skinny. So many body checks in her outfit of the week or minute or whatever. Watch 6:02 "it doesn't interfere with the shape so much" translation: it doesn't make me look fat.

Just a reminder these are the exact type of comments ruby wants to hear. When people tell me I look skinny it just reinforces my dangerous habits as someone with anorexia.
Let’s comment on how ridiculous she is but try and refrain from talking about her being thin/anything to do with weight.
No attack on you at all! Just thought it was the right time to mention it

 

[xoxoxo13]

she criticizes workaholism culture when she's made her money from it

 

[Scapier88]

Updating your laptop Everytime a new software comes out is incredibly tolling on the planet. Please think before you buy a new electric gadget every year

Why would she need to upgrade her mac book she has the LG laptop

 

[acadaymia]

Her recent video reminds me of a comment earlier in this thread or the one before that, where someone said Roobs will probably try to ease us into her 'news' of dropping out of uni. It's like she's soft launching her inevitable decision or something. That being said - I do find it sad that after 4 years she just recently came to the conclusion that uni isn't great for her?? It just undermines everything that her channel is built on.