THIS IS NOT NEWS!

This piece is purely satirical, and is not intended to contain any accurate information.

William Gray excelled in all of his classes throughout mid elementary school and middle school. However, everything changed for him come high school. When everyone stopped “treating him like a god”, suddenly his lack of proper study skills, which would have been learned had he been put in regular classes, started affecting his school. The straight A student became a straight B student, then just an average student with a mix of A’s, B’s, and C’s. Gray began to experience what is known as gifted burnout. He became very unmotivated and depressed, feeling he had peaked in middle school. Little did he know that it was not just feeling, but a fact.

Today Gray is working a dead end office job, stuck in a cubicle all day and barely meeting deadlines. When we came in, he quickly switched off of his Twitter tab to an empty spreadsheet and said he couldn’t interview because he was busy, but he could in three hours. After six months, he called us back and scheduled an interview

Interviewer: Hey Will, how’s it going today

  William: I’m doing okay, how are you?

INT: That’s great to hear. We wanted to talk to you about gifted burnout, is that ok with you

WG: Oh yeah I could go on about it for days!

INT: Good. Let’s start off small. When did this all start?

WG: Well I was born in 1993 to a family of 3. My parents got along ok until they divorced and I don’t have much of a recollection of things after that until like third grade. I remember some counselor coming to talk to me but I never–

INT: No, no, the gifted burnout.

WG: Sorry he laughs I just take whatever opportunity I get to trauma dump. Anyway, in freshman year of high school I realized “Wow, I wasn’t prepared for any of this” and then began to experience serious self doubt until I no longer had the motivation to really do anything. Dragging myself out of bed in the morning was and still is a chore.

INT: Wow, that’s some pretty heavy stuff. Now, do you feel the school system failed you or did you do this to yourself?

WG: Oh the school system 100%. They treated me like a god, never cared too much about homework, and I never really learned how to study. I wasn’t prepared for when in high school I would get assigned one-two math assignments a day plus all my other classwork. On top of that, there were people smarter than me! I wasn’t a god anymore, I was just another kid, barely meeting deadlines and getting subpar test grades.

INT: So how does this affect you today?

WG: Everywhere. I’ve got multiple write-ups at my job for missing deadlines, I’m the second worst procrastinator you’ll meet (I’ll get back to you with the first), Interviewer Laughs And I never feel like I’m good enough no matter how well I do. Instead I go home every night and lay in bed staring at the ceiling, sometimes crying, sometimes sobbing, sometimes screaming, just trying to cope with everything, y’know?:

INT: Okay that got dark I’m gonna cut you off right there–

WG: Oh and not to mention the constant existential dread

INT: I said I’m cutting you off! That’s enough!

Unfortunately our interviewer got too uncomfortable and had to end the interview early. To wrap things up, gifted burnout is a serious issue, exposing the deepest flaws in the American school system. It is painful that one should have to deal with such hardships and grief over such simplistic things.