I’ve never really been all that into studytubers. Even as a bright-eyed sixth former, I found the pastel highlighter-covered notes cloying and the overly-cheery admission that they read books while brushing their teeth unbelievably tragic. The fixation on grades was deeply disturbing, too. I still stand by my belief that if your main personality trait is getting an A* in A-Level History, then you really need to get a hobby. I’m sure Unjaded Jade is a lovely person, but there is something about watching other people study that really doesn’t appeal to me.

Perhaps the mild hatred is really jealousy. Ruby Granger wakes up at 6:30am and drinks herbal tea at her meticulously organised desk. I, however, crawl out from under my filthy hovel of a bed at 8:30am, down my Aldi coffee from an unwashed mug (I like to believe mugs preserve flavour like cast iron-skillets do, rather than accumulate mould), and then attempt to do 'admin' (AKA browsing Facebook) on a filthy desk.

“I’d found no fewer than three mouldy cups and had started to panic that my recent headaches were the consequence of black mould poisoning”

However, the ideal time for me to bite the bullet and start using Notion is probably now: I'm in third year. Rather than fester away at my mouldy desk while flicking between two unfinished dissertations, I decided to take a leaf out of Unjaded Jade et al’s book and get on the grindset. What could possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately for me, there are no SparkNotes summaries of all the crackpot stuff Ruby Granger gets up to on the regular. So, I had to do my research the old-fashioned way: by watching copious amounts of YouTube. The first thing  I noticed was that all of the studytubers I watched had impeccably tidy rooms. The cynic in me put this down to my belief that no sane person would want to show their disgusting hovel of a room – with its overflowing bin and mountains of clothes strewn across the floor – to tens of thousands of strangers on YouTube. But the optimist in me also remembered reading something about how tidy spaces make us feel less distracted. So after hauling myself out of bed at 7am, my first step was to tidy my pit. Easier said than done. All Ruby Granger had to do was make her bed and open her curtains; I nearly had to call in a waste disposal unit.

One hour and three rounds with the Henry hoover later, my room was beginning to resemble a livable and studyable environment. Did I feel calm and ready to study? Absolutely not. I’d found no fewer than three mouldy cups and had started to worry that my recent headaches could have been the consequence of black mould poisoning.

With my room tidied and mould (mostly) banished, it was time to get scholarly. I’d watched one studytuber read a book while brushing her teeth because if you don’t spend those precious two minutes of scrubbing those pearly whites while being an academic weapon, then apparently your whole life will fall apart. Or something like that. As it turns out, brushing your teeth and reading is easier said than done. Being utterly unable to coordinate items in both hands, I opted for resting my book on the edge of the sink. This way, I was able to turn the pages with my left hand while brushing my gnashers with my right. This was a sorry mistake. Almost immediately, I found myself having to make a real conscious effort not to drool my toothpaste-y sputum all over the pages every time I looked down to try and read a few words. The book carried on trying to fall into the sink, and in concentrating on the words, I found that I couldn’t focus on getting all the nooks and crannies of my mouth squeaky clean. By the time the ordeal was up I had read one page, avoided incurring any library fines for leaving spit on a book, and done a mediocre job at maintaining my dental hygiene.

“I found myself having to make a real conscious effort not to drool my toothpaste-y sputum all over the pages”

Teeth marginally cleaner, and feeling all the better for the 50 words that I (sort of) read, I was ready to get into the ‘study’ in ‘studytubing’. Ruby Granger says she likes to have an internal deadline, which was fantastic news for me because I only run on internal deadlines. However, I supposed hers didn’t consist of doomsday-esque messages such as “if you don’t finish this section of your dissertation by Friday then you will fail your whole degree and your entire bloodline will be cursed." That’s just a matter of preference, though. I set myself the task of writing two thousand words of my dissertation by the end of the day, and like Ruby, sat myself down to get right to it. It worked, but it was nothing new.

In between simply throwing myself into an entire day of uninterrupted studying, I also tried out a few of study methods. My version of the Pomodoro Technique  involved a walk to Pret. While there, I spent the entire duration wondering that if I hadn’t worked hard enough in my degree up until this point, and if I wasn’t doing Ruby Granger-esque eleven-hour study shifts, then maybe I was an academic failure.

Maybe it was the tidy room helping my synapses fire, or perhaps the Cornell note-taking I’d been attempting, that was streamlining my thoughts, but I suddenly had a moment of clarity. Most studytubers are trying to market themselves as aspirational, creating their content more as a form of study inspiration than to showcase a realistic depiction of how most people work. Most normal students don’t work in immaculate rooms with neat notes; most of us work in crowded libraries with slightly messy desktops. They also don't have limitless time to study; throughout the day, we simply have other things to do, such as attending society events, meeting friends, or working a job.

At the end of the day, I didn’t really find living like a studytuber to be all that more productive than my regular life. Sure, my room was tidier. But I’d just come to realise that I was already doing a lot of similar things to many of these people, just without the nice planners and tidy desks. At the end of the day, YouTube isn’t real life. Most students aren’t pulling 11-hour study shifts, usually because they simply can’t. So reorganise your room, attempt the Pomodoro Technique, type your essays from the comfort of your own bed – whatever works for you. Just maybe try and keep books out of your teeth brushing routine.