Thinking about her festival playlist that she put supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (yes I had to copy and paste that) on and now I can't find her spotify to relive the campiness of it all
I hated the slow mo ending, a bit too dramatic.Not gonna lie, as a lonely lesbian, this spoke to me.It’s quite poetic andI liked the video style.
Nah I don't think she is capable of realising sth like that. She only mentioned it because she read it somewhere by chance and wanted to show off her "extra knowledge" no matter how useless for the actual thesis topic it is. Either way her writing is basically rewriting what someone else wrote, she's uncapable of any original thought or argument.Her whole rambling about muses actually made me think there is a great essay in there somewhere. The change from the active to the passive muse and how they were not being paid could make an interesting research question and/or a feminist discussion of intellectual property of women or art as a social process rather than individual achievement.
Of course none of this is even remotely relevant to her ACTUAL research and dissertation. This, again, is the perfect example of going on tangents and doing all of them half-assed instead of focussing on one thorough argument.
I actually did find that passage relatively okay but idk if it's just me but I wish she would have chosen another topic, anything but Lewis Carroll. This whole child muse thing given the history of Carrol is making me a lil uncomfortableIt was a good decision to cut that extract about the artist and the muse. I'm uneasy about how this might be applied to Lewis Carroll's work because his 'muse' was Alice Liddell, a child. I don't think Ruby mentions this at all, but there's no way to skirt around the issue.
Totally agree! That advisor who told her she should write about Carroll's letters instead of Dickinson's really did her a disservice there, imho. Then again maybe Ruby just did a bad job of pitching her proposed Dickinson project and that's why they tried to redirect her to sth else, who knows.I actually did find that passage relatively okay but idk if it's just me but I wish she would have chosen another topic, anything but Lewis Carroll. This whole child muse thing given the history of Carrol is making me a lil uncomfortableBefore she started to work on her diss she shared some of alternative topics and idk I just think she could have done a way better job with Emily Dickinson.
I don't think even she knows. It's just a kitchen sink of tangential nonsense.I really want to know what her argument is overall - I'm really not sure how she's been able to think of anything useful or relevant, past linking it to a wider literary context (which is just basic level stuff tbh)
This is what’s confusing me. I’ll admit that my academic background is not literature at all and also, trying to be fair to Ruby, we’ve only seen snippets of what she’s doing but I’m really struggling to see how you could write about Carroll’s letters in the way that Ruby appears to be doing and call that a dissertation for an English Literature degree. She seems to be focusing on this idea of letters as gifts but Jesus H. Christ on a bike, Carroll seems to me to be a very problematic person to take that approach with. I struggle to believe that if that is the angle she’s taking, she isn’t going to have to at least mention the issues there.I think the main problem that we can all agree on and others have pointed out: this isn't a Literature dissertation.
The muse point was interesting, but again: not really a Literature dissertation (not the way she was using it, at any rate).
She HAS to be penalised for that, surely? Like even IF her writing was actually coherent etc, the fact that she has written a history come sociology essay for her final Literature degree?
Haha, I've actually done all these suggestions. (Student kitchen barely gets used and at most I've seen people come to make themselves a cup of coffee and my siblings and I only swap round during exam season if we're both wanting to do a mock, so I'm lucky that it doesn't actually inconvenience everyone, of course if it was, I wouldn't be doing it). I'm just shocked she doesn't mention libraries? Is she just not on campus enough to remember there's a location that is designated for studying?After failing to eat again, Ruby states that the key to motivation when your brain is flagging is just to change study locations. Why not go study in your student kitchen or family kitchen? You know, places were there is definitely no thoroughfare of people wandering through and it absolutely won't distract and inconvenience everyone involved. Speaking of inconveniencing people, why not swap rooms/desks with your sibling? (There are all genuine suggestions that she offers.)
She actually prefers getting in everyone else's way at home and in coffee shops, it's herI'm just shocked she doesn't mention libraries? Is she just not on campus enough to remember there's a location that is designated for studying?
As far as I know, none at all. When Jack Edwards did his video about his dissertation I remember him saying quite a lot about his argument. Me and my friends used to all swap dissertations pre-submission for proof reading, and to get inspiration for structure if we were struggling. The topics of people's dissertations were spoken about pretty casually in seminars as well. Sometimes I wonder if Ruby refusing to say anything about her dissertation content harks back to the primary school attitude of "Someone else might steal my idea!".EDIT: Are there any rules that say you're not allowed to share what your dissertation is about? The only explanation for such a lack of an overarching argument that I can think of (other than Ruby being Ruby, which seems good enough to me) is that she's choosing not to share, for one reason or another.
From the information we have been able to find out about her dissertations via her videos it definitely doesn't seem to be a Literature dissertation, like sure the letters are important and can be classed as literature but she's literally submerging her thesis in pointless secondary material and not focusing in on the literature, but as we have seen before, this is the way Ruby works. She can't form an opinion of her own and is incapable of analysing a text without the help of other resources. Deciding to choose Carroll's letters as the main focus sure is a baffling choice and I really don't know how her tutors didn't warn her against this choice, unless they did and she decided to go ahead with anyway because she thinks she's always right. I've only very recently handed in my own Literature dissertation and everyone on my course was advised to write about two or three primary texts and pick a broad enough topic to write about. Ruby hasn't done this and this is why her Literature dissertation appears to be more of a history/sociology mishmash. Like I'm sure Carroll's letters are important but how much can you really analyse without going off on a tangent like Ruby has evidently done?? It's an absolute mess, she has no argument and is completely reliant on secondary material. If she could construct an opinion/argument of her own a dissertation exploring how two or three texts explore the theme of Victorian Girlhood would have been great, but alas she can't and now she's writing a mess of a dissertation which appears to have a very small focus on Literature.I think the main problem that we can all agree on and others have pointed out: this isn't a Literature dissertation.
The muse point was interesting, but again: not really a Literature dissertation (not the way she was using it, at any rate).
She HAS to be penalised for that, surely? Like even IF her writing was actually coherent etc, the fact that she has written a history come sociology essay for her final Literature degree?
Fair enough, if it works, it works! Although in Ruby's case it's just musical chairs to keep her from focusing on anything for more than 15 minutes.Haha, I've actually done all these suggestions. (Student kitchen barely gets used and at most I've seen people come to make themselves a cup of coffee and my siblings and I only swap round during exam season if we're both wanting to do a mock, so I'm lucky that it doesn't actually inconvenience everyone, of course if it was, I wouldn't be doing it). I'm just shocked she doesn't mention libraries? Is she just not on campus enough to remember there's a location that is designated for studying?
EDIT: Are there any rules that say you're not allowed to share what your dissertation is about? The only explanation for such a lack of an overarching argument that I can think of (other than Ruby being Ruby, which seems good enough to me) is that she's choosing not to share, for one reason or another.
Absolutely, I think letters can also prove vital for specific literary research and I'd say most written texts can be fair game as long as there is a logical reason behind the choice. I think what bothers me most is that her dissertation seems so directionless, there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind why she decided to focus on these letters specifically besides "I love Victorian letter-writing etiquette" and "I ALWAYS make sure to post seven letters a week". Also, the fact that she was researching Bakhtin's polyphony of the novel at some point which the author strictly applies to Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov (which just sounds like another Greek muse excursion but in a completely different direction) - it is just such a puzzling experience to witness.To be fair, English literature as a field of study has undergone/is undergoing a rethink of what constitutes "the literary" and letters are definitely fair game.
To be fair, that is generally what it’s called in the UK - typically you write a long essay and call it a ‘dissertation’ as the culmination of your undergrad studies. The only time I’ve ever heard people talk about theses tends to be for a PhD, it’d be strange to hear an undergrad talking about their thesis.*By the way, it annoys me to no end the way Ruby proclaims she's writing a dissertation. You're an undergrad writing a thesis for your Bachelor's degree. No need to get all huffy and puffy about it!
I think this is a re-tread of that first-year failure where she ignored all the clear essay instructions, wrote a massive amount of irrelevant drivel against her tutor's guidance, got a deservedly lower grade and then cried on the internet that she was punished for "experimenting" and "taking chances". That was probably the last time she wrote an essay for herself before just ripping off everyone else's ideas, so it's fitting that she's gone off-piste again when there's nobody to copy from.Honestly, I wonder where Ruby's supervisor fits into all of this. What Ruby's doing - or rather, failing to do - is to write a cultural history of the reception of Lewis Carroll's letter writing, which would be a terrific topic for a PhD thesis and beyond but surely nothing for a BA thesis. Did her supervisor comment on the sheer scale of Ruby's thesis at all and did Ruby ignore them? Or does Ruby think she's beyond supervision and went for a trainwreck of a dissertation anyway because she's the self-proclaimed Wunderkind of literary studies?
*By the way, it annoys me to no end the way Ruby proclaims she's writing a dissertation. You're an undergrad writing a thesis for your Bachelor's degree. No need to get all huffy and puffy about it!