![]() ![]() This is the epitome of the ‘gifted-kid burnout’. Students believe that intelligence is a fixed trait and develop fixed mindsets which make it difficult to transition into higher education as it is seen as something that “threatened to unmask their flaws and turn them from winners into losers” so they stop trying to protect their egos.īecause I had been defined by my intelligence for so long, I felt as if the inability to produce high level results made me a failure and thus, I had no motivation to continue with schoolwork. At one point I simply stopped trying because was too afraid that I would never be ‘smart again’, no matter how hard I tried.Īccording to Professor Carol Dweck, t his is called the ‘low-effort syndrome’. Because I was so accustomed to relying on simply my natural ability, I did not know how to study and found myself trying to catch up on so much classwork in so little time. In Year 7, I was placed into the ‘A’ class, where I found myself surrounded by other students whose academic level matched my own and I was no longer the ‘smart kid’. However, at some point, gifted kids have to move on to harder classes. I stopped trying as hard in class because I knew I would achieve great results. ![]() These labels inflated an ego that was too big for my small body and made me convinced myself I was some kind of ultra-talented genius. As a result, good grades came easily and I was constantly praised, eventually becoming labelled as ‘gifted’. ![]() In my youngers years I was placed in a class where most of the students did not grasp concepts as quickly as I did. The Davidson Institute claims it is as a “chronic exhaustion that stems from a mismatch between the individual and their current educational environment … gifted kids may also experience burnout due to the unique sources of stress in their lives and the expectations that come with being gifted.” Put simply, kids that are considered ‘gifted’ experience academic underperformance as a consequence of becoming tired dealing with expectations of perfectionism which cause constant stress.Įxperiencing the gifted kid burnout myself, I can say that I peaked in Year 4 and from there my academic success had been steadily declining. The phrase ‘gifted kid burnout’ has been thrown around the internet, but how exactly is it defined? Despite the humour that comes with these posts, the serious undertones of this issue cannot be disregarded. The concept of the ‘gifted kid burnout’ has been raised before, though in recent years it has become a punchline for social media posts deploring the ‘gifted kid’ label and its negative impacts on wellbeing and education. “I’m going as a former Gifted kid for Halloween, the whole costume is just going to be people asking, ‘What are you supposed to be?’ and me saying, ‘I was supposed to be a lot of things.’ ![]()
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