Ruby Granger #41 Poor Blakeney, being replaced by ChatGPT

[duchess_wallis]

who’s to know what’s real, frankly, with someone who lives so inauthentically.

This is so accurate and well-put. Her lies make me angry, but reading this made me so sad for the way she's choosing to live her life. Not as in I pity her, I don't, it's her conscious choice, but it just sounds so pathetic.

 

[Redrose97]

That's the problem though -- there are very few, if any, existing lit on her topic from the era she is supposed to be studying. Chatgpt can't just spit facts out of nothing. Chatgpt is a text predictor, it works by scraping large amounts of data from across the internet to try and determine the answer to a prompt. If there is no data, it cannot output anything. Or rather, it will still attempt to answer it, but the output will be completely wrong and irrational. Anything it producers on girlhood from the 15th century is unlikely to be factually accurate. It will pull from things like movies and skits to generate a response. The real question is, will Ruby know enough to catch onto the fact that the AI is talking shit.

I don't know if she will be able to get really get anything from it. Like I have tested it myself as I have written and got my undergrad dissertation online and I tried to get propt the AI to ansewr my essay questions and it was unable to do so, and when it did, it was a very vauge answer about things and it was completly wrong about other topics that I've put in that I've researched.
I think that Ruby would take it at face value especially with how quickly she has incorperated it into her 'study,' sessions so far. I can see it her using it when its deadline time as she has faffed around doing water colours or twirling in the Oxford grounds instead of doing her reading. I hope she does fall on her face but Ruby always seems to land on her feet or appears to do so. She seems to be in fear of getting a bad grade especially with her reaction to get 2.2 for her first essay. I do wonder how much it infulenced her studying and methods to get firsts.

 

[Peony14]

In Italy we have this whole repertoire of cringy songs that are exclusively made for children/teenagers to sing at church or church-adjacent activities like youth groups, trips, the scouts etc
The funny thing is that there's only a handful of them because they didn't bother to make more, they've been around for like 30-40 years at this point and they were designed to be catchy and easy to learn, so basically any Italian person of any age knows them by heart lol

It’s similar where I am from
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I honestly can’t bring myself to watch her latest videos anymore…

 

[coldestofspirits]

@soph30 We almost certainly at least have mutual friends, it’s such a small world! I can’t imagine putting as much on social media as Ruby does, for exactly that reason.

 

[zayazaya]

wait I haven't really seen a lot of posts here lately but why do we think that Ruby doesn't read at all? I assumed that writing your university dissertation and getting a decent first would require at least some reading, surely she can't copy paste from Blankley *I hope I spelled her name correctly*

 

[Donald23]

Yeah please feel free Oxfordians to correct me, but I'd be surprised if postgrads got a place in the main college? They're mainly for undergrads right? At the uni I was at postgrads weren't mixed with undergrads in halls at all, but I'm aware Oxford is different. Surely there's just not the space to put them all together in 15th century buildings?

However Donald she did post a pic of her at Jesus today

A lot of post grad Oxford accommodation is dotted around the city. It can be as far out as the headington area for some of the accomodation. From what I can tell it’s done on a random draw basis for post grads. If she does a day in the life it may be easier to suss out the area
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Yeah that's what I mean, usually not! As if they give it to one postgrad it's a bit unfair to not give it to the rest and it's the undergrads that are in bigger number. Interesting tea from Donald above that that room looks a bit modern for Jesus, do we reckon she's in some modern block and just pretending she's in the quad?

There’s definitely nowhere central that would have that modern inside vibe. It’s easy enough to zip around the city and pretend she’s living centrally though

 

[soph30]

It’s still a bit hot down south for a jacket?

 

[Birdyboo]

She looks so much better in this first vlog , almost normal !

Rewatching her first day at Exeter vlog is an interesting contrast to this one.

There, she went out on campus and made an effort to meet people, strike up a conversation and put herself out there. Later she mentions that she'd left her door open all day while she was in her room to encourage people walking by to say hello.

At Oxford, all the work to meet people was done for her, all she had to do was show up and still she couldn't be bothered. She's clearly not there to learn, she isn't there to take part in the social side of university, so she's just paid £40,000 just for the opportunity to take staged photos on an Oxford bench.

 

[mindlessness]

I have been to Oxford and I can tell you that - based on what we have seen in her videos at least - this will almost certainly not be happening. I'd put dropping out higher on the list of probabilities.

Oh I assumed it was clear I didn't mean she'd be correct in her 'um actually' statements, just that she'd be trying to outdo the others in class discussions.

 

[nobluefrogs]

The last time I looked at her page (Which granted was several months ago) She'd only ever sold one book to a big traditional publisher.

Who's her agent? Maybe a connection from Exeter?

 

[soph30]

The people I know who have managed to use their parents’ money to get preferential treatment are nowhere near actual royalty either. Personal selfishness and entitlement tends to be the unifying factor…

The thing is though is that I’m sure if you REALLY want an old room you can ask for it whoever you are. It’s just the boarding school lot who tend to want it more as they’re more used to it, and some less privileged people might actively want a less Gothic intimidation fest room as they’re already overwhelmed by the posh Hogwarts environment (I said some, i’m generalising)! Im sure if Dan from Durham emailed the college saying he really wanted a posh room they’d try and find one for him, just those types (and most of us) often don’t bother to ask

 

[Peony14]

I remember her saying in a video recently she is more light academia than dark academia

My bad, I tend to lump those two together since they do oftentimes look very similar

 

[ilovetrashtv]

Her whole latin spiel irks me to no end. I had latin for six years in school and there is so much that goes into eventually being able to accurately translate a text, even if it´s only a small excerpt. I suppose since she seems to have an actual latin class at uni she´s finally going to learn it properly as opposed to her "learning latin = copying random conjugations into a notebook" she did at home - at least I hope so.

I also noticed this (aka zoomed in and tried as hard as possible to make the words out).

One of the titles appears to say something like "and maybe I'd kill myself if..."

There's also a "New Vocabulary" which is presumably where she plots any word she's seen elsewhere in literature or in other people's lexicon that she thought sounded clever and would do the same for her should she write or say it

Maybe ‘New Vocabulary’ is where she notes the actual words and their actual meanings of words she *tried* to use?

 

[coldestofspirits]

I got full funding and know multiple other people who did. [Edit: I have reflected on whether to share this and decided in the interests of honesty to do so - actually, all my good friends who have done a masters or PhD have been funded. I’m not saying it’s a laudable view, but our shared POV has generally been that self-funding is slightly cringe, which is the viewpoint I’ve brought to some of my Rubert posts.] That’s what I’m saying [edit: about portraying the state of things in the UK accurately regarding funding] - you’re misrepresenting how rare it is. I am genuinely sorry you were disappointed, but not everyone can get funding.

Do you think Ruby should be given funding? I’m sure we can at least agree on that, right?

 

[soph30]

I’ve never been to uni at all so I’m wondering what types of books they have. I can’t imagine them having rows of YA books for enjoyment? The libraries seem like they would be mostly educational and related to all the courses you can study??

They mainly are but world famous ones like the oxford one will have better books, classics etc. Most unis would just have course shite

 

[VallegGirl]

I actually can't believe it but a girl I know has won a pumpkin productivity planner AND received it AND shared it on Instagram, absolutely wild

Guess the giveaway actually did happen?!

I wonder if she'll use it?

 

[hart301]

I agree with Weeping Cassandra re private school but just to add we don't really have anything similar to the SATs here. I think you have that in addition to your GPA made up of your normal subjects, is that right? Most of our uni courses don't require an additional test, other than your GCSE/A level grades, with the exception of law (LNAT) medicine (various - UKCAT, GAMSAT, think there's others) and then Oxford and Cambridge tend to do their own admissions test for each subject, but those are specific to Oxbridge and wouldn't be a score that you'd submit to any other uni. Not sure about medicine or the Oxbridge admissions tests but I did the LNAT as I read law, and you couldn't repeat the test to get a better score - you could only sit it once per application cycle. It was possible to buy a 'prep course' if you were rich, but we were actively discouraged from doing this anyway as it was thought to be a bit of a con, and the skills tested on the LNAT weren't really things you could cheat your way into being good at. Also, not all unis even care about the LNAT, only a few of them actually require it. So, the money thing definitely would've helped Ruby for private school fees (although some private schools are selective and some aren't, so it would also be worth knowing which kind she attended) but not for any external test type thing, and as Weeping Cassandra said you can't really endlessly repeat your A levels or GCSEs in the same way

Sorry about the spelling errors etc as I am currently on the bus but…

Our GPA tends to be considered to be what your class rank / GCSE is. It’s basically our scaling of how our normal class grades (non AP) classes rank so a 3.0 is the “average” while a 4.0 is “above average”.

However there is a problem with GPA where it isn’t really accounted or standardized depending on the school district or even state you are from. Some places rank their kids on a 5.0 level because they try to account for AP exams classes. It’s why many UK universities don’t take US students for undergrad unless they took a certain number of AP exams because they are standardized.
Because of the weird discrepancies between each high schools GPA, it’s why most Americans try to focus on the SAT/ACT (depending where you are, I took both) and if you fumble on that / you don’t get enough money from a College due to poor SAT scores or a inflated (or deflated!) GPA then you go to a community college which is 2 years before you go to a university where GPA is more standardized.

However, private schools will have higher SAT scores or inflate up their students GPA so you’ll see schools where kids all have above a 3.0 when if they went to the local public school they’d have a 2.5. They’ll also have classes called SAT prep where they basically teach the kids route memorization because it really isn’t a thing in the US (hence why I believe our test scores are low)

 

[soph30]

I think this has to do with how radically different the US / UK education systems are. I never understood why so many people freaked out about A Levels and GCSE until I realized it was a sort of “life or death” thing where in the US if we fuck up in High School we have Community College / other opportunities that don’t rely solely around tests to further our education

Yeah we can move to academia thread as OT but if you don’t do well in your A levels you’re basically screwed Yeah you can go to uni later (or not at all) but if you’ve been excited about it for so long…

 

[duchess_wallis]

For me it's the slight lisp on BLOOKS too. blookth

what do you mean "slight"

 

[bookworm39]

There was also mention of legends and folklore and she just ripped off at least one Robert Burns poem for it.

Noooo! Leave Robert Burns alone, Ruby, you can't have him!