Reject the pitiful interpretation of academics. Disobey and rebel against the notion that academics are burnt out gifted children.
Fuck that. From now on, you are partaking in the identity of someone who values academic and formal education, what type they may be, whether or not private or public school, scholarship or tuition paid courses, formal or self-education,
The identity of an academic STEMS (pun intended) lies from the natural inclination towards learning everything about the world-- to the point of the consumption of yearning with love and curiosity expressed in controlled and managed softness while your heart tightens as it expands through more, chest tightening as it constantly carries a chest full of love and heavy breathign at the burden of your expansive love for academia, one of which you are excited to carry.
Being a burnt out gifted child is to admit your people pleasing tendencies, progressing you on a pathline that allows you to walk, trip, stumble, and get back up on your journey in self-love, as you discover your love for books and learning and yearning about the world and its hidden knowledge more- feeling the new skin you've just revealed and entered and embodied for yourself. One- not born in pleasing those who appraciated the existence of education as a means of their lack- but through they eyes of someone falling in love with it more the second time.
Genuinely.