Ruby Cline was just like us last year, navigating university life, living away from her family, struggling with questionable flatmates and completing online exams for the first time in her educational journey. This is what prompted her to write a guidebook to help current undergraduates, during the interview she shared her honest thoughts writing All the Work You Shouldn’t Do during her undergraduate at Cambridge.
We began our discussion on her experience at the prestigious institution, sharing how her university experience wasn’t a typical one due to the intense academic workload. She had to “supercharge” her learning when it came to navigating essays and university life. Besides considering her personal experience at university, she surveyed students and lecturers across different universities, and even those who dropped-out to provide a comprehensive perspective of university. She shared her thought process of how important it was to understand how university works, why it worked and why sometimes it might not.
Beyond being a HSPS Cambridge grad, Ruby is a trainee journalist and an educational content creator under the handle @ConversationswithRuby which began her advice-giving journey. She started off with Ruby giving direct advice to audiences, while she navigated her studies, building a small loyal community. As her page grew it acts much more like a forum, hosting a broader conversation with her audience, where she acts as the admin. Her content has now shifted to sharing a topic of interest and asking for opinions seen through her recent video of “how old is too old for clubbing”. She shared how lucky she is with how her community acts as an intellectual safe space for individuals to share their thoughts without
judgement, which was one of her aims, create a conversational space.
Beyond TikTok, Ruby shared her thoughts on how due to the nature of shortform content, she wasn’t able to expand the science behind why a particular study method worked. She needed to cut out the nuance in her research as audiences wanted snappy bite-sized content. By contrast, in her book she ties her interest in the psychology behind a theory and the application to the practical. Such as explaining the cognitive science backing why we procrastinate and how to overcome it. Though at times, Ruby found it hard to balance the line between advice and science, with her curiosity acting as the main driver to her research. She gave credit to her incredible editoral team and her friends whom helped her balance the
complex science and the accessible nature of a guidebook for undergraduates.
All the Work You Shouldn’t Do is a “first book of its kind” to address the post-pandemic, deeply digital university life, with most university guidebooks on the market seemingly out of touch with the post-pandemic age. Ruby’s book fills this gap, providing a unique insight into current and future challenges that students may face during an increasingly AI world. University like all things was transformed immensely during the pandemic, with the introduction to online and open book exams. Ruby emphasised how education now compared to pre-pandemic is deeply dependent on the eloquence of writing and a focus on detail, creativity and being a thinker rather than what it traditionally used to be based on, memory.
Her book goes beyond giving academic advice but also providing a solution to navigate the social struggle we are seeing due to the effects of the pandemic. With most Gen Zs missing out their experiences of the key moments of childhood – making friends at school, attending prom and socialising in real life, which causes the social side of university to be even a bigger hoop to jump through. She highlighted how students are often afraid of confrontation causing them to be stuck in “bad relationships and friendships”, her book provides guide to navigating personal and professional relationships such as how to approach your first office hour, confront your flatmates and setting boundaries. All backed by
a Mel Robbin’s tone paired with science.
Due to COVID-19 and learning remotely, it has removed caused university to just what’s on the page, the long readings, lecture slides and notetaking. This inspired the name of her book All the Work You Shouldn’t Do, since university is more than the academic experience from socialising, career development and extracurricular activities. Her title is somewhat misleading, as it doesn’t encapsulates the caveat that spending time on something is never really a waste as you can learn something from it. Beyond this, Ruby’s title is implying that by doing the things she recommends, it can make your university life easier. During our interview, she shared with the biggest issues that students face, procrastination and being
unconfrontational, she expressed that students had an attitude of, “the devil you know is better the devil you don’t know” causing them to be stuck in their comfort rather than facing the issue head on. With most problems at university being fixable as we are still at the starts of our lives.
As for what’s next for Ruby, she hopes that All the Work You Shouldn’t Do, provides readers with the language and context of how their brain works, giving actionable steps towards a successful university experience. She’d love to keep writing, starting with her day job as a journalist and potentially another book, though she is not sure what that’ll look like. She expressed an apprehension of writing a guidebook for graduates as life is far too much to put into a book, though she’d love an opportunity to explore more about her dissertation topic, feminist gossip and areas such as misinformation, disinformation and online creatorship, sharing her personal insights.
Looking back at university fondly, expressing that life is a weird scrapbook that you get to complete only once. In hindsight, if 18-year-old university student Ruby had this book, it would help her get better grades and give confidence in herself, when making friends and making her life easier.
All The Work You Shouldn’t Do by Ruby Cline is out now in paperback and audiobook.
