Ruby Granger #46 Actively making time for boredom

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Not sure. It's quite difficult to get funding in the humanities. I reckon she probably just didnt think her masters would be a good enough mark to pursue an Oxford PhD (as they don't just take anyone for a PhD even if you self fund) so she didn't apply. No idea if Oxford EngLit has a January start available for PhDs.
There's no way she'll get funding without an actual topic for the dissertation. An extremely talented person in my field had to self-fund their PhD at Oxford, even though their grades and previous scholarly work and topic were all top-notch. It's hard to predict. They went through with it but I never got the courage to ask how they managed it (maybe a loan + jobs?), since they came from a working-class family.

In my entire circle of academic contacts, I know <5 under the age of 45 (maybe even younger, just estimating, I'm horrible at guessing age) who completed an Oxbridge humanities PhD with full funding. Things were different earlier, I hear, but it was still difficult to get in; I suspect the class divides and prejudice against certain groups made it even harder. I applied to Cambridge for a PhD and was accepted but without funding (despite having a topic that involved working with materials on their campus). I couldn't afford it and my family were not able to help me. I went somewhere else where I was completely funded with additional merit stipends for the first X years and got a much more thorough education in my field + training in how to teach at the uni level (which I needed). I'm grateful for this - in retrospect, I am so glad I went to a place with an extensive program prior to and during the writing of the dissertation. I had to pass a lot of exams (I think 8) along the way in special topics. When I see a program where virtually nothing is tested, I get a bit suspicious now. I have sat on hiring boards as a postgraduate representative and seen candidates from top schools without basic skills in key aspects of our field. Three such candidates had Oxbridge PhDs. Of course there are outstanding scholars there, but it's shocking what slips through the cracks.
 
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She will definitely get in for the PhD. I honestly do not personally know a single person who applied there and didn't get an offer. Funding is another story. Oxford and Cambridge are both notorious for making way more PhD offers than will ever get funded, they know people are desperate to go there and will pay through the nose to say they've done their PhD at Oxbridge even though getting funding at another good uni is arguably more prestigious.

I'm surprised she managed the Distinction if I'm honest, surprised she's had a year off, and extremely cringed out by her constructing her own 'curriculum'. I'm all for education and lifelong learning but at this point, this just looks like some severe form of mental illness.
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Of course there are outstanding scholars there, but it's shocking what slips through the cracks.
The last student I reviewed a proposal for got into Oxford, it was the only place he applied, he wasn't willing to go anywhere else. His parents paid for it, he didn't get funding. It was honestly one of the worst proposals I've ever reviewed, and he was the type who thought he knew everything so hardly implemented any of the feedback he got from me or others. I really couldn't believe that they gave him a place based on that proposal, I cannot impress upon you how terrible it was, to the point where I have to conclude they will accept basically anyone these days
 
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Been a while since I said something here! But PhD funding isn't an issue for Ruby - she can either pay for it herself or take out the Doctoral Loan from Student Finance England. I would seriously advise everyone and anyone against the loan (terrible repayment schedule especially if you already have undergrad/masters loans) but people do do it!

Weak PhD ideas unfortunately get accepted all the time - for the university, they can offer anyone a place really, they just don't offer everyone funding/grant giving bodies can't say yes to everyone. If someone wants to pay their own way to study something random for 3-4 years, why not? It's no skin off the uni's back really (rightly or wrongly!)
 
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She's launched YAT ANNOTHHA NYEUU ADDJOKAYSONAL SEEEHRIES on Instagram that's once again literally just her copying everything she heard from a lecturer at Oxford and offering it up as her own work.

It's painfully embarrassing how much she's milking all the handout material from her lectures and workshops for content, parroting real academics' thoughts and ideas while adding absolutely nothing of her own but mistakes, hand-flapping and verbal diarrhoea.
 
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If she doesn’t get funding for a PhD, I feel like she has the money to pay for it herself and would go for it anyway
 
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I never received the impression that she needs funding for anything. I think this is a large part of her problem of acting and being privileged. She has no reason to work, other than her life being a complete waste of time and energy, and she is obviously getting bored, with all her repetitive content. Her so-called friends have moved on, and will continue to do so, while she is left behind, because they need to pay off bills, need to work for a living. Not once have I heard her mention, in spite of being such an "amazing" student, about receiving any kind of scholarship or earning any gift towards paying for uni. She is just continuing the academic route because she is terrified of not having that identity and the actual responsibility of holding a job with responsibilities where she is no longer the student, but rather the employee, no longer the pampered child-student, but rather the one in the background, doing the menial tasks. There is no endgame to anything she does. Baffling, really.
 
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Rain and stoddying! How very exciting!

At this point it's getting even more ridiculous. What's next? A change my diapers with me? For a vegan she really loves milking the cows until the last drop with that unexpected study with me.

By the way, I was theorising that this house was a little countryside school before and this view really but really looks like my primary school, which was a very small countryside school.
1724869580322.png

On the left that could remind a black board, and on the right their fridge looks like some office cabinet. And her outfit is vaguely like what my mother and aunt were wearing at school.
 
She's launched YAT ANNOTHHA NYEUU ADDJOKAYSONAL SEEEHRIES on Instagram that's once again literally just her copying everything she heard from a lecturer at Oxford and offering it up as her own work.

It's painfully embarrassing how much she's milking all the handout material from her lectures and workshops for content, parroting real academics' thoughts and ideas while adding absolutely nothing of her own but mistakes, hand-flapping and verbal diarrhoea.
I haven't had any time to get completely caught up on Ruby. I feel like you're the best person to ask: has she demonstrated any capacity for original thought? If she pulled off these marks, she must have had at least one original, decent idea, right?

If not, what was her most interesting topic or idea so far? I will get caught up eventually, sorry to ask for the spoon-feeding. I do find it tasteless that she's producing content ripped from her lecturers without any nuance at all. But I fear that's all she's capable of producing aside from narcissistic videos of herself dressing in wrinkled, baggy clothing.

My pet theory is that deep down, she wants to be like the "Other Girls"™ and get easy attention for her looks and clothing. But she can't reconcile that with herself, so we have the worst of both worlds: a faux intellectual who "dresses up like books." I think this is the only way she can fulfill her desire for attention/praise without sacrificing the illusion of "intellectualism" she's built her identity around. She must know by now that anyone trying to replicate her (fake, unrealistic, unhealthy) image of a studious person would burn out quickly; she knows this because she herself splices the footage from multiple days into one day. I thought she would have learned something deeper while at Oxford, but I don't really see evidence of that.

I wonder how her professors and tutors feel about grading someone who cries online over a mark on an essay that didn't even matter in the long run. How does she film that and not think twice about how that attitude reflects on her as a human being? Learning from mistakes is important in postgraduate education and even at the highest levels of academia.
 
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She looks like she can barely make it past that desk? piano? Whatever it is in that screenshot. That is a tight hall to pass through for absolutely no reason at all.
 
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At this point it's getting even more ridiculous. What's next? A change my diapers with me? For a vegan she really loves milking the cows until the last drop with that unexpected study with me.

By the way, I was theorising that this house was a little countryside school before and this view really but really looks like my primary school, which was a very small countryside school.
View attachment 3137683
On the left that could remind a black board, and on the right their fridge looks like some office cabinet. And her outfit is vaguely like what my mother and aunt were wearing at school.
The random water fountain outside her bedroom always gave me school vibes too
 
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Now that's the kind of content I want to see from a booktuber:



Interesting, funny, insightful.
 
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At the beginning of the video she clearly says that it is a Saturday yet in her planner although she has a sticky note covering the day it says Thursday. So, yet again she is lying about what day she filmed this video on as I reckon it was filmed on multiple days given her various outfit changes.
 
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I'm convinced that her BookTok 'video essay' was a shallow attempt to show everyone how 'gifted' she was in childhood. "Look at all these pictures of my child self, reading! I was such an ✨ intellectual ✨ that I didn't even read picture books!"
 
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She's really not happy about the Shakespeare books been annotated is she despite the fact that she does it herself.
 
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She's really not happy about the Shakespeare books been annotated is she despite the fact that she does it herself.
I know, right? Should have read the descriptions of the sellers more closely then, they usually tell you everything you need to know about a book's condition.
 
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"I can tell that they're A level annotations"

Blimey, what a stroppy madam :LOL: this is the same person that PAINTED an entire page blue.
 
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I haven't had any time to get completely caught up on Ruby. I feel like you're the best person to ask: has she demonstrated any capacity for original thought? If she pulled off these marks, she must have had at least one original, decent idea, right?

If not, what was her most interesting topic or idea so far? I will get caught up eventually, sorry to ask for the spoon-feeding. I do find it tasteless that she's producing content ripped from her lecturers without any nuance at all. But I fear that's all she's capable of producing aside from narcissistic videos of herself dressing in wrinkled, baggy clothing.

My pet theory is that deep down, she wants to be like the "Other Girls"™ and get easy attention for her looks and clothing. But she can't reconcile that with herself, so we have the worst of both worlds: a faux intellectual who "dresses up like books." I think this is the only way she can fulfill her desire for attention/praise without sacrificing the illusion of "intellectualism" she's built her identity around. She must know by now that anyone trying to replicate her (fake, unrealistic, unhealthy) image of a studious person would burn out quickly; she knows this because she herself splices the footage from multiple days into one day. I thought she would have learned something deeper while at Oxford, but I don't really see evidence of that.

I wonder how her professors and tutors feel about grading someone who cries online over a mark on an essay that didn't even matter in the long run. How does she film that and not think twice about how that attitude reflects on her as a human being? Learning from mistakes is important in postgraduate education and even at the highest levels of academia.
That's probably the funniest thing - I don't think she's ever come up with anything resembling original thought in her content and she's arguably never had a single "interesting" video, at least not in any traditional sense.

98% of her content is the same copy-and-paste, smoke-and-mirrors vlogs/routines in which she stitches together 3-10 days' worth of footage and presents it a single day to try to look awe-inspiringly productive, so anything that breaks from that pattern I guess is more interesting by default.

There's lots of things that I think would be genuinely interesting to see in videos - like her actually talking about her writing process in depth, her experience with her agent and her attempts to get published. But ultimately she can't and won't talk about things like that, because she'd have to reveal how much she relies on simply copying the work of others and filing off the serial numbers. So instead, it's just interchangeable footage of her staring at screens, talking about "dyooing somm waaahrk".

For me at least, the videos she does upload are a fascinating cringe-watch to see what new lies, contradictions and utterly insane nonsense she'll offer up with a straight face. But for someone who prides herself on at least claiming to be an intellectual, there's no evidence of the intelligence that's supposedly earning her those high grades.

Any time she attempts to offer up something intellectual, it's either completely incoherent, never approaches a point (like the latest BookTok video essay) or is just 14 disconnected ideas that she overheard in lectures slapped together with no through-line (or all of the above). And that's usually the most telling thing: Every time she puts her "educational" hat on to impart wisdom to others, it's to talk about something she just studied in a module, and she just regurgitates what her lecturer told her, with a few mistakes added because she was too lazy to pay attention or understand/engage with the material for herself.

So far she's only done a couple of video essays. There's that latest Booktok one, then there's her hilariously bad Matilda visual essay:



I think that's a rare occasion where she actually tried to offer ideas of her own and didn't just rip off lecture handouts. But like all her other attempts at academic insight, it's a babbling, disjointed mess. It's also incredibly telling that the only text she could engage with was for children, and that she over-intellectualised an incredibly straightforward story, reciting the basic themes of the story as though she were providing were some trenchant critical analysis.

It's also worth checking out the lone essay of hers that made it online and the University of Maryland apparently deemed worthy of publishing:


Yet again, it feels like 3 or 4 stolen ideas haphazardly stitched together with no coherent point and padded with endless supporting quotes, which seems to be the recurring trend with her academic content. It's all borrowed/stolen ideas incompetently presented as her own.

It's hard to believe that she's saving all her original thought, wisdom and insight for the essays we don't see while she's lumbering around in videos like a dim-witted, blabbering, incoherent dimwit and any writing she shows is riddled with errors, incompetence and no evidence of intelligence. Grade inflation and copying other people's hard work did a lot of the heavy lifting for her, but I don't know what accounts for the rest.
 
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