"She clearly did none of the reading." Proof, please?
Yes, I dislike Ruby. As much as the next guy on this thread. But you all seem to think that Exeter has no checks in place. You CANNOT survive without doing the reading, or prep. You can have all the access to other people's notes in the world (my friends and I frequently shared notes, extra reading, and viewpoints), but if you've not done the work and got the understanding, you WILL fail. I had to borrow other people's notes for an assessment (due to my nan passing away) and I got a 48. The one I did with my own reading? A 68. There is a difference between sharing ideas (which, by the way, is the entire point of university.) and relying on someone else to do all your work. Ruby would not have got a first without doing her own work. Love her or hate her, she had to work independently, and produce work of a good quality, to get that grade. The markers at Exeter are harsh.
Getting other people's input on modules you perhaps struggle with is not a crime. I am sure that, if Ruby really was relying on Blakeney, she would not have got the grades she did, nor would she have progressed past first year. It is drilled into everyone, in your first week, that academic misconduct is serious, and will result in you failing assessments and possibly even being kicked out. Ruby clearly did not engage in this. The essay long posts that you produce will not change that. Saying things like that just devalue this thread. It takes all of our valid points (about her body checking/eating disorder, her toxic productivity, her privilege, etc etc.) and gives her something to focus on to make sure she can ignore any of the points raised here. Like it or not, she earned a first class from a top university. Whether or not you believe that was "easy", she did it. And now what matters is how she puts it to use. Saying she didn't do the work just gives her a reason to turn a blind eye to everything said on here.
People do not read Sparknotes summaries, produce character lists in Notion and read critical essays
before reading the main text. People do not read the criticals essays
before the main texts. There's just no reason for that if they're approaching the learning process as intended on the level. Yet that's what Ruby says she did.
At best, it's one of the most stupid and suspicious things she's ever said. At worst, it's a very clear indication that she skipped the required reading entirely often if not all the time in favour of condensed study guides intended to provide everything a student needs to not bother reading the book, and read critical material first to have someone intelligent to parrot
Having a chat with a friend/fellow student about an essay or part of a text you're confused about is one thing. Scheduling a fixed meeting with them before (and often after) every single seminar and lecture is wildly unnecessary for anyone. And Ruby said on multiple occassions that she "didn't understand her own thoughts" on the required reading/lectures until Blakeney discussed it with her. She could not spell it out any more if she tried.
She either didn't read the required material herself and struggled to understand the nuances of the material because she'd only read truncated synopses and study guides, or she read the material and even with the lectures she sat through and the study guides she (for some reason) read before the main text, failed to understand any of what she read despite them being fairly straightforward books to study at undergrad and her claiming to be a genius.
She outright says, with no ambiguity: She got Blakeney to read critical essays for her and tell her what was in them. Letting other students to do the recommended reading for you is not doing the work as intended. It is not engaging with the learning process. It's not technically cheating, but I'm sure if any of her tutors were aware of it, they'd have immediate concerns, especially combined with everything else she's said and shown.
I'm not saying she did no work or that she was outright plagiarising. I'm saying that she took every dodgy shortcut possible to avoid doing as much work of her own as she could. She laid out her process for all to see as much as she could without outright admitting to it. She skipped the required reading as much as possible in favour of study guides transposed into Notion. She got Blakeney to do half the required critical reading and meet with her before every single academic appointment so that she understood the reading assignments and had things to say in the seminar.
So far, Ruby's done nothing for herself and all the basic foundation work is taken care of, buying her a lot of time to look at critical reading outside the recommended reading lists, which is what they look at for higher grades. Along with online resources, she also showed that she used Genei and advertised it heavily - a researching tool intended to give you condenced versions of full critical essays and journals.
Any other student would be doing the required reading themselves, reading the book or play (
first, before anything else) and forming their own thoughts, then reading the recommended critical material themselves. Ruby quite blatantly didn't do that, so she had an abundance of extra time (not factoring in her zero extracurriculars and zero non-academic responsibilities) that other students didn't have to look at wider critical material.
From there, I completely believe that, given her regular habit of reading the critical material before even looking at the main text, she either looked for an angle in a critical essay that she liked, used the argument as the basic for her essay and reverse-engineered an essay from that/Blakeney's thoughts and ideas. She showed that she regularly sent very leading, very long emails to lecturers to coax ideas from them or to steer her in a direction.
I assume Exeter is like most English lit undergrad degrees where essay questions are pre-written by the lecturer and students get a few to choose from, meaning that it would've been incredibly easy for her to get the solid skeleton of an essay put together without doing the required reading and relying heavily on the thoughts, opinions and ideas of Blakeney, lecturers and authors of critical works.
Academic cheating checks are not going to catch that, because it's not copy-and-paste plagiarism.
Seminar tutors aren't going to flag it because Ruby knows the basic story, characters and themes from the study guides and she's had Blakeney unwittingly coach her on the seminar questions under the guise of a study chat in the form of a mandatory pre-seminar debrief session.
Grading tutors aren't likely to see anything because there's only a finite amount of arguments to offer within the confines of a prewritten essay question, and on paper Ruby looks to have read the text, understood it, have original thoughts and read and quoted a wide range of critical material to support and contrast her ideas.
Factor in grade inflation at Exeter, and yes, it's very easy to get a First if you take the shortcuts and have all the time and resources that Ruby did. You also wouldn't be learning anything or improving your own ability to engage with material critically, which is the major problem Ruby has: Even after years of studying literature at university, she's fundamentally incapable of critical thought, or even basic thought. She robbed herself of the whole point of university and has nothing to show for it but a grade she didn't earn.
That's might not be academic cheating, but it is cheating herself and her viewers. Because she didn't learn anything at uni but how to take shortcuts to avoid learning. And she still presents herself to her impressionable fans as a studious, naturally gifted genius bookworm, despite all evidence to the contrary. She presents her methods as the way to get ahead, when if you approach things her way (reading study guides and critical essays before the main text or strongarming your roommate into endless study session to discuss pretty rudimentary material or getting other people to do the reading for you) you'll learn nothing.
Considering Ruby keeps beating the drum that she's so in love with the process of learning, she sure did seem to avoid doing it at all costs.
Yes, her attachment to the past is weird and it’s clear she’s got some issues. However, having a mentor-like relationship with girls who are interested in academia is actually not an evil thing. There are comments from girls who knew her as head girl and talk about how nice she was to them. Having experience with bullying and loneliness herself, she was probably a helpful figure for some of the girls. Haven’t you ever met the weird horse girl librarian who’s awkward but still nice and harmless? It’s the same energy for me.
I actually think that helping younger people is a nice trait to have and it’s honestly ridiculous how quickly it got compared to stories of people being sexually abused. Like, come on.
Ruby does not help young people.
Ruby pushes toxic and dangerous habits onto impressionable children and gives the direct inference that chugging water all day long and studying 12 hour days is the key to academic success.
Her "daily" vlogs are a collection of fabricated lies and footage assembled from multiple days which show herself accomplishing far more in a 24 hour period than is physical possible, while she doesn't eat anything resembling a healthy meal.
Impressionable young kids aren't going to see through those lies. They're going to emulate Ruby, and work themselves to death on a diet of water and snack bars striving to keep up with an impossible routine.
When asked to stop showing toxic and triggering content, lie her obsession with shoehorning ED-baiting content into videos unrelated to food, Ruby has refused. She's plead ignorance and lied and avoided the issue and gaslighted people over it and never, ever changed. She is not a nice person, despite how she may try desperately to appear so.
Ultimately we don't know whether Ruby's obsessive fixation with children has a sexual element, however unlikely it might seem. But regardless, Ruby is a dangerous and toxic influence on children out in the open for all to see. Nobody should trust her to be talking to kids behind closed doors and she is no role model to anyone.
cloudbathing